What has
Islam
given to Humankind?
Mamdouh Al-shikh
Translated by:
Prof. Mohamed M. Hussein
Editor: Nick James
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The Book: What has Islam Given to Humankind?
Authored by: Mamdouh Al-shikh
Copyright © 2010 2017 by Mamdouh Al-shikh
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or
mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted
by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher,
addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address
below.
mmshikh@hotmail.com
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Digital Issue Introduction
The story behind writing this book
T
he story behind writing this book began by with a
question about Islam's contributions to mankind ... I became so very
preoccupied by this question until I submitted the my answer to it in
writing to the Conference organized in London in November 2002 by
the World Committee on the Nussrah of the Seal of the Prophets
(God's Peace & Mercy be upon Him).
The Paper carried the same title. On accepting, in absentia, my
humble exegesis, the Organizing Committee directed my attention to
the value and the validity of such an important issue that needed to be
hammered out on the stage of research and, having been to be
tackled, and later to be developed into a book. It dawned on me, when
the opportunity made itself available, to embark of on this venture,
that hoping to make it could be made handy to Western non-Muslim
readers via by having it translated by the Arab Thought Institution in
Beirut. The arrangement did not work out to my satisfaction, however.
By the end of 2013, I decided to publish the book on the
internet, seeking only the reward (Thawab) of Allah. At first, I
hesitated, for fearing that so doing might defeat my purpose of having
it propagated, and thereby putting a limitation on the circulation I was
dreaming of for such an effort. My hesitation did not last long as the
Ministry of Kuaiti Waqf sought my participation with through a book
in their "Rawafed" Series.
3
In no time, this book came into being with the new title
suggested by the Series editor suggested: "A Lantern from the
civilization of monotheism and mercy". The book is among the
writings which I consider as comprising the nucleus of my intellectual
developmental project i.e. "my evaluation of an Islamic vision" as it
contains a proposed definition of 'civilization' which I hope one day to
issue as an independent work.
In a world like ours, where most of the Islamic literature is
characterized as being on the defensive or the argumentative side, and
since this work is intended to reach non-Muslim readers, I still cherish
the hope that one day an Arab Cultural Institution such as the Arab
Thought Foundation, or any other foundation, would be able to
translate this work into other languages. All praise be to Allah
Mamdouh Al-Shikh
Cairo, Egypt, 2017.
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First Edition Introduction
T
here is no doubt that the relationship between the West
and the Muslim world is witnessing a multi-dimensional crisis that
impels all of us who take interest in developing, propagating and
defending Islamic ideas and thoughts to formulate a more accurate and
refined message to be addressed mainly to the West, and to exert more
efforts in appreciating the questions often raised by Westerners
regarding Islam, with a view to assuaging the fears of the target
readers.
It was really an anachronism that the bloody events committed
by some so-called ‗Muslims‘, followed by a chain of acute and
antagonistic reactions on the part of some Western journalists and
writers, including repeated attacks on our holy prophet Muammad
(peace be upon Him) and on our religion altogether... , was a cause led
to the necessity for Islam to is strongly presenting itself forcefully
anew to the West covering in respect of all aspects of daily life
(politically and culturally, and making use of all levels of mass and
social communications tools available to Western readers).
This has been
and making achieved astounding with
exceptional successes, ;and it has thereby forcing forced itself
vehemently irresistibly onto the Western research agenda of research
and prodding obliged some aloof and arrogant parties to accept a
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dialogue – that was thus previously remote, unreachable and
unapproachable – with Muslims scholars and thinkers.
Despite that timid and hesitant dialogue between our Ummah
(the nation of Islam) and the West, our mutual relations are still in a
state of jeopardy, being strained with tensions and an unsure future...
this places upon us a the burden that we have, at the least, to
presenting our religion in its pure form, casting away all kinds of
distortions attached to it by the extremists on both sides.
In order to relay the pure message of Islam to non-Muslims,
our efforts should not rely only on what fair non-Muslim Western
writers reiterate about the religion of Islam (which is important but not
sufficient). We are invited, instead, to present the civilized Message of
Islam as a great gift to mankind with the understanding that we do not
exaggerate if we say that such a gift has miraculously preoccupied
many scholars and preachers for very quite a long time in the past
years.
To me personally, I was haunted for years by the question:
what has Islam offered Mankind thus far? Mine was not a question
raised by a skeptic, but, rather by someone who was willing to
formulate a comprehensive synthesis of the contribution of Islam to
the Hhuman civilization; thereby uncovering, at least, its bases and
solid foundations.
Islam is revelation from Heaven protected and shielded by
Allah from any falsehood... It stands above all suspicions and is not,
therefore, subject to any accusation... It has no need for humans to
defend it. However, believers are responsible for purifying the
message of Islam and for presenting it in its best unadulterated form to
the best of their ability to non-Muslims.
This is a human task to be undertaken by the proponents and
adherents of Islam, and this has nothing to do with the promise of
Allah to protect and shield the message itself from being destroyed.
Many Muslim scholars, when defending Islam, confuse the myriad of
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Islamic achievements that have contributed to edifying the human
civilization by treating them as the contributions of Islam while when
they are mainly and merely contributions of Muslim human beings
who understood themselves, the world they lived in, and tenets of
their religion which guided their efforts and helped them perfect such
achievements.
But the end result of such efforts was mainly and chiefly
human. The Muslims were only human beings who interacted with the
existing ideas and realities of their time alongside with their nonMuslims fellows. Therefore, any Islamic contribution to humanity
should be seen separately from the contributions of Muslims whose
efforts did only helped unravel the grandiose and greatness of Islam.
Needless to mention that, their success varies in terms of degrees and
intensity.
Despite of the role played by Muslim thinkers and scientists in
advancing the experimental approach which benefitted the real of
humanity, and despite all other Muslim achievements and
contributions almost in almost all fields of knowledge, Muslim
contributions to the advancement of Humanity represents only the
fruit; for the seeds of such contributions are far more valuable.
It might may be suitable, in order to cover, encompass and
fully appreciate this role, to begin by defining 'civilization', the term
that figures prominently in many academic books of stature, ancient
and new, but does seem to be lacking clarity as it is often confused
with other terms such as :'culture' or 'urbanity'. Since the concept of
'civilization' is widely used by scholars and journalists, I prefer to
offer a new definition of my own to for this concept.
To me 'civilization' means: "every integrated paradigm that is
capable of organizing the relationship among the values of 'right',
'liberty', and 'order'".
Every such an integrated paradigm should ostensibly or
inherently include a tentative comprehension of the world's existence,
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its nature, and of humanity and its relationship with that world.
According to such a scheme of thought, every civilization delineates
its stand regarding the existence of God; thereby predicating the issue
of the birth of the universe on that stand towards the existence or nonexistence of God.
The relationship among these three values is the focus of man's
movement on earth. Heavenly revelations as well as holistic human
intellectual ideas (i.e. ideologies) they all shape certain visions with
which man attempts to rearrange and organize this relationship in a
way that is characteristic of, or emulating, religions.
In as much as organizing the relationship among these values,
which we see as governing values, has to be based mainly and
necessarily on assigning certain definitions to these very values, then
we find that the human history is almost an argument between the
'philosopher' and the 'prophet'. This leads us to begin with the
definition of 'certainty', which is the mother of civilization.
One of the important rules laid down by Muslim scholars is
that "Men are recognized by the truth, while the truth is not
recognized by men".
But this rule, which does not make 'men' the way for knowing
the truth, proves that the truth is the right way by which we know and
recognize people. It, is mainly limited to 'proving' and/or 'denying',
and as such it does not offer a specific way for knowing the truth nor
does it offer a specific definition of it. The path to truth could either be
revelation, mind, intelligent guessing or experiment.
The fourth route (to knowing the truth) is one for partially
perceiving truth; not for knowing the truth, which is abstract in nature
even if it could be proven vial concrete pieces of evidence.
This rule (of inference, induction and deduction) reflects
Islamic intent and dedication to getting rid of false beliefs and ideas
that make the human being itself a path to truth, even though some
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people are like milestones on the road to truth and right genuine
knowledge.
As for revelation, it emanates either from a predecessor, or
from a source beyond our concrete world: If it is from a predecessor,
then it is merely a question of following, which could can entail the
danger of ascribing other partners to Allah, and if the predecessor is
only a medium of receiving the revelation – and a source for the truth
itself – then it is equal to other sources of knowledge.
However, receiving revelations from non-concrete sources,
which heavenly religions call alWahi (Heavenly Revelation) or
inspiration, is a departure of the mind from the concrete world and
drifting away to something to be perceived but not contained,
understood but not to be reproduced.
Of course, there are means with which one can perceive and
distinguish the right from wrong among all pretensions: one of such
means is intuition (inherent or explicit), without which there could be
no certainty.
Intuition itself could be based on logical reasoning since
introductions lead to logical consequences. But this could still be a
matter of personal inclinations and propensities which the perceiver
himself might not be aware of.
Therefore, in as much far as intuition is necessary for each
certainty, certainty itself must first be understood: if every generation
takes it upon itself to reexamine any axioms, platitudes or postulates
assuming that such axioms, platitudes or postulates do not, in reality,
exist, this would lead to or end up in having all consequent
generations inheriting only suspicions, doubts and skepticism, and
hence their disbelief in the truth as an abstract concept.
The longest life of every human being is estimated not to
exceed one hundred years or a century, one fifth of it (approximately
20 years), is spent before he or she becomes mentally mature and
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capable of doing intellectual research which involves abstract
reasoning, deduction and generalization ... it takes to the rest of it
takes to reach a concise and succinct definition of the concept of
certainty that comes from a different path away from Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation) or following predecessors.
Besides, if one quarter of the human being's life (about 25 t0 to
30 years) is spent in sleeping, every exception in this regard does
confirm, and does not negate the preceding rules that we are talking
about.
Even if we suppose that man can spend what remains of his
lifespan (about 50 to 55 years) looking only for certainty without
being preoccupied by other needs of life (securing his food, seeking
medication, or getting some rest), he would be unable to access the
truth, given the bulk of accumulated knowledge and theories that
humanity have has attained thus far, and that he will have to absorb ...
such this would be an unattainable objective.
Some commit grave mistakes when they think they would
have only to invent a platitude, not to discover it. Platitudes, however,
are part of a universal system that encompasses the human being and
remains quite unfathomable by his senses.
The paths to certainty are numerous and hierarchical, even
though they may seem to be equal or on in a row.
And because the attainability of certainty is a complex matter,
expounding it in details is still beyond the reach of the human mind,
which has to realize that it is first a mind, and second that it is able to
reason. It has also to realize the know-how stand the process of
reasoning and all that it requires (i.e. the prelude, the consequence, the
necessary, the core, the changeable, the abstract, the fixed, and the
general law....) and also to realize all the problems surrounding
perception and its pitfalls, in order to distinguish (while reasoning) the
false from the truthful. The mind has finally to realize that there is
something called certainty.
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We might be dissuaded to not to think along these lines just
because we received knowledge from our predecessors, whose
knowledge also came from their forefathers who were likewise
following in the footsteps of their ancestors, and so on.... etc until we
reach the first one in the chain of reasoning. But this first reasoning
being is still reasoning on the basis of a hypothesis (which cannot be
proven beyond reasonable doubt), and basing certainty on a
hypothesis is unscientific.
To argue that mindful reasoning occurred as a through chains
of biological development chains that started with the Ameba and
ended up with the maturity of the human being, is something that
belies many platitudes and does sound more plausible that believing in
the existence of a Creator God. Both arguments belong to the unseen
anyway.
This means that the unseen has been is whelming the human
mind from the beginning. Taking for granted postulates and platitudes
so that believing in them cannot be subject to reasoning is, according
to the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, something unavoidable.
He says: "It is not possible for us to move one single step forward if
we begin by with the skeptic model of Descartes ... we have to begin
by broadly acquiescing to whatever looks like knowledge no matter
whatsoever".
These platitudes and postulated postulates exist in all cultures
and civilizations; be they based on a belief in the existence of a
powerful force that created the world and gave it its meaning,; or be it
based on the belief that such a force created the world and left it after
giving it the laws that govern its movements; or, alternatively, still be
it based on denying the existence of such a force and thereby rejecting
the idea of creation altogether. Such postulates and platitudes may be
there... but they need a human effort to unravel them.
The human mind, in realizing all that exists, follows a
methodology as path to certainty. Research methods have been
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developed and became known and available to all culture and
civilizations. The choice and scope of which method is to be used or
applied, is something to be determined by the cultural and value
system prevailing in society as it precedes the choice of the
methodology itself.
Of course, there are reciprocal effects between a certain
method of research and the researcher using it. These effects cannot be
observed without looking into the cases and issues involved and only
through relying on or following a different methodology.
On the road to certainty, the human mind attempts to absorb,
and understand the solid arguments passed to it from revelations or
from predecessors; to interpret whichever whatever of it accepts
interpretation, and to exert an effort in appreciating the unreasonable
with the help of facts, platitudes and axioms which are beyond
dispute.
However, intuition is fraught with slippery grounds iness and
is sometimes impervious to sound understanding. It dawns on the
thinker and makes him or her jump to the conclusion the moment he
or she advances a postulate. As such, it does not follow the known
steps of reasoning and it helps the human thinker to appreciate and
taste any transformed information. It is also a road to judging between
or balancing equivalent pieces of evidence.
Certainty cannot be built only on intuition, nor can it promote
whatever interests a group of people may have, nor does it lead to
creating partial new truths not supported by revelation, reasoning, or
experiment.
Intuition means that the human mind is not a white carte sheet.
Moving from a certain prelude postulate to a conclusion is a form of a
simple or a complex analogy, and moving from individual cases to the
general law in any induction requires that the mind knows the
meaning of the postulate, the consequence, the necessary, the core, the
changeable, the abstract, the fixed, and the general law. Here we
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become face to face with the role, unless we accept all ideas and
arguments that precede certainty... in which case alWahi (Heavenly
Revelation) restores its place a as as a hegemonic over mind.
If a man stipulates that he would follow only what he could
perceive, he would in that case make himself equal to the source of
truth. If he takes it upon himself to leave parts of truth which do not
echo well with his mind, then he makes himself a criterion for truth. in
which case, the mind itself becomes both a source and a criterion of
truth at the same time.
If the human mind was capable of this, it would have been able
to produce the truth in the first place. To pretend for the human mind
can to be able to produce truth means would necessitate the existence
of a superhuman being, which does not exist since people are
generally different in terms of minds and capabilities.
This would necessarily lead to the emergence of an individual,
or a group of individuals, who would retain for themselves the ability
to produce the truth; thereby taking us back, once again, to the idea of
the priesthood or clergy, where the priests were considered the only
people who to be endowed with the privilege to of producing the truth
(a back door to Shirk closed forever by Islam which made the
relationship between God and man a direct one– without
intermediaries – and made the idea of salvation possible through, or
depending on, laws known to every believer, and provided men with
the intellectual abilities that enables believers to reach salvation in a
direct relationship with God without having to rely on any
intermediary for blessing and with no discrimination between
believers on the basis of sex or race).
Moreover, pretending that human beings can a priori produce
the truth, would necessarily means that the world is created out of
nothing which is something the human mind denies and rejects.
And due to the fact that perception is involves a complex case
of psychological and mental dimensions, man usually reverts to
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certain ruses or tricks via which he avoids having to confront the
determinism and the oneness of certainty; thereby attempting to create
a distance between the revelation and its interpretation... then the ruse
goes on until the offshoot becomes a branch of knowledge and at a
later time to the offshoot replaces the branch. In such a case,
interpretation becomes an objective in itself (per se), and the
revelation becomes merely a mold, or a construct, into which the
human mind pours its convictions.
Here it becomes imperative for the scholar to distinguish
between the constant and the changeable or, to use Islamic
terminology, is to distinguish between: the 'fundamental' and the
'allegorical', wherein the fundamental serves to shield the holy text
against being corrupted by any wrong interpretation.
The concept of truth in Islam is a complex concept one, which
representing one of the most important donations or bequests Islam
has given to mankind. It is not based on reconciliation between all
methods of attaining knowledge without putting such methods against
one another and without preferring one to the other. It is a concept that
transcends the existing material world of ours and one that does not
depend on human beings.
Allah, who made truth one of His holy names, is comparable
to none. Thus, Islam is against the idea of incarnation (personification
or embodiment) which, across the history of mankind, has been one of
the biggest causes of human misery and despair.
Those who accepted the argument that God can be embodied
in a human being, had to think of God in a humanlike form that likes
humans: In that context, the chief priest of the Church of Contribute
said: "God created man after own Image and therefore, God is blond".
This led to many other depictions or portrayals of Jesus (God
in Christianity) ... some argued that he was black, to others He was
yellow,... and the like.so on. Assuming the existence of a similarity
between God and the human being led to boasting, haughtiness,
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egotism and arrogance; thereby giving more room to, and sometime
justifying, racism.
Likewise, the idea of the embodiment of God in the form of to
a certain people led to the idea of the Chosen people (by God) in
Judaism, which was has been greatly largely responsible for the
isolation of Jews almost in almost all societies they have lived in,...
and also to the differentiation in between how they treat each other the
treatment of Jews with each other from and their treatment with of
non-Jews or the Goem.
In contrast to this, Allah in Islam represents the Perfect, the
Absolute, the One who cannot be embodied in a single person or in a
group of people; thereby guaranteeing equality (with all its trappings
and paraphernalia) among all humans, who are equal, and that they
should be treated as such.
Thus, negating the idea of incarnation or embodiment
altogether, closes the door before dividing the peoples of the earth into
any dichotomy: holy versus non-holy or desecrated; or, politically
speaking, into hegemonic versus dominated, or into any other
dichotomy that plagued the history of mankind in which the
desecrated were to be subjugated.
God cannot be compared to anything or to anyone else, and the
people are, therefore, equal in being humans ... — every and each and
every one of them possesses the ability to choose between good and
evil ...— no one of them can attribute to himself a special connection
to God on which he or she claims certain privileges or rights above all
other human beings.
In the Islamic conceptualization, Truth has a central unique
position that makes it a criterion for judging all other positions, ideas,
or relations regardless of whatever the conditions and circumstances
might be. The centrality and uniqueness of Truth in Islam did prevent
any other contradicting conceptualizations. This has to do, of course,
with the supremacy of conflictive ideas, the inability to accept the
15
'other', and finally to the extent of annihilation or the total destruction
of the 'other'.
If we accept the rule that says that "contrasts makes vivid
images", then the difference between the Islamic and the pragmatic
conceptualizations of truth makes illuminates the picture to for us. In
pragmatism, the idea of benefit in the final analysis assumes an
advanced position over truth which resulted results in making ability
the only criterion for preference,; thereby dividing humanity into:
- The strong or "the superman" who is a super being above all
humans and who enjoys absolute rights with no scruples to hinder him
or her; and
- The weak: or "the sub man" who is lower than, and should be
subservient to, the superman.
Based on this dichotomy, some sort of sanctity was added to
the conflict as a norm of the relationship between the two sides. Thus,
the choice was transformed from revolving around goodness (i.e. from
being an absolute good) into a conflictive concept mixing together
brands extracted from Darwinism and the ideas of Nietzsche, which
extremely greatly exalts power and makes it a sign for the choice.
With the multiplicity of truth, its sanctity was removed from it and
with that concepts like such as goodness, mercifulness, forgiving, and
altruism, which constituted part and parcel of humanitarianism, of the
human being were also removed.
At the philosophical level, the history of philosophy used to
reveal, up to the coming of Islam, two distinctive orientations:
The first orientation: the hitherto prevailing conceptualization
of the idea of Contrast (the necessary and inevitable confrontation
between two – or more – different or distinctive elements or factors)
which necessarily leads theoretically to a conflict between such
factors or elements. That is to say that the conflict between the thesis
and its anti-thesis determine the final outcome – an idea which has
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traditionally delineated the philosophical conceptualization of the term
conflict from Plato, to Hegel and Marx, and which is the prevalent
orientation on the Western philosophy in general; and the second
philosophical orientation postulates that Contrast is the essence of the
existence itself.
Islam came to establish yet a third philosophical orientation or
tradition,; one that stands at a distance from these two Western
philosophical orientations and is tilted towards a collective
conceptualization of the existence, comprising all its aspects and
'contrasts'.
According to this brand new Islamic philosophy, humanity
was able to experience for the first time ever the idea of reconciliation
between many of the existing contradicting dualisms such as:
matter/abstract,... heart/mind, ...soul/body, ... as well as between all
other conceptualizations which attempted to fully account predicate
the demarches of man on this earth.
By introducing this new philosophy, Islam was able to achieve
its goals for the human being and not at his expense as it did not allow
the existence of any political, economic or philosophical idols to
which man has to be submissive, and in the meantime it did not
destroy or sacrifice man's idiosyncrasy in nation for achieving more
progress.
We can learn multiple many lessons from this Western
philosophical experience, however: for example, the idea of conflict
led to a peculiar relationship between man and the environment, over
which he attempted to take control, away from any moral framework.
This was liable able of adversely affecting many of the
existing balances in nature and, finally, man had to finds himself
facing front of an insurmountable environmental problem which can
be explained only in terms of the absence of any moral framework for
his relationship with nature.
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Islam, on the other hand, put nature with all its elements under
the authority of its moral code, in which where the concept of
Taskheer (subjecting everything to man's service on earth) played a
role in the relationship of Muslims with nature: since Allah subjugated
it to man's needs, the idea of conquering or dominating nature
disappeared in Muslims' parlance.
Beside, the Western experience provides us with yet another
important lesson: that of the high price man has to pay if he attaches
himself to the worship of achieving progress. The current insoluble
crises that the Western individual and family are suffering from
facing, which could can be considered to be a price they pay for their
clinging to progress, prove that the success of any system should not
be attained at man's expense.
Islam's stand vis-a-vis the cause of liberty, is considered one of
the basic mainstays in the message of Al-Islam which, in the face the
many forms and types of submissiveness experienced by mankind
socially, economically, politically, and/or culturally in other cultures,
Islam exalted the two values of 'contracting' and 'consenting' as two
important consequences of man's possession of the right to choose.
That was why Islam forbade and nullified coercion in religion
and in (entering into) contracts,; and activated the value of
compassion in order to put a brake on the contracting system, thereby
disallowing preventing it from becoming so too rigid or a goal in
itself. Islam lumped combined all these values into one composition,
so and the end result was a system where Attaqwa (the fear of God),
which is available to everyone, became the criterion with which all
people could be judged, and did not make Attaqwa something to be
inherited or to be granted at someone else's will.
The companions of the prophet (God's peace and mercy be
upon Him) realized that fact, as many of them reiterated: "We are
come to take people out of the darkness of serfdom into the light of
liberty".
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There is a dialectical relationship between the oneness of God
which is the heart of the Islamic faith and the concept of liberty which
is considered a necessary condition for the soundness of the belief
itself.
If one takes a moment to contemplate over the Islamic
legislation for organizing the life of mankind, whether in the field of
fighting against serfdom and slavery, or the emancipation of women,
or in combating tyranny and despotism,.... one finds out that the
liberation of individuals and of groups is characteristic of this
legislation it. And from the standpoint of culture, by taking an
antagonistic position against coercion in religion and entering into
contracts, Islam gave humanity the best bestowment ever.
The concept of liberation in Islam is comprehensive, stretching
from Aqeeda (faith) to daily dealings to culture, that is why dialogue
was taken as one of the most effective media of interaction in Muslim
societies; underlying the fact that disagreement is natural among
humans and that persuasion and convincing is the criterion for what is
known as "cultural circulation" (a term I use to describe an historical
Islamic contribution which came to interrupt century of the continued
march of man being characterized by suppression, humiliation, and of
decisions imposed from above by some religious or political
authorities).
Under the shadow of this "cultural circulation", many different
religions and philosophical sects coexisted, the centers of cultural
influence were able to move from the East of the Muslim World to its
West. The Arab World, which has always been at the heart of the
Muslim World, did not deny prevent the extreme parts of the Islamic
Empire, from Andalusia to the central Asia, from having its own say
or its making their own contribution or its right to actively participate
participating in establishing the edifice of knowledge of Muslim
culture.
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The issue of liberty was, and still is, a condition for the
soundness of faith and a condition for the legal binding of all
contractual relationships in society; be this relationship economic or
political, to the extent that the absence of such liberty is not merely a
problem among the elite, but, rather, a social problem.
Islam established relationships among the people within clear,
sanctified, and Godly limits and confines; thereby putting an end to
the thoughts of permissiveness with in both its meanings political and
moral meanings, and thereby forbidding the strong from infringing on
the weak, or encroaching on others' rights. Islam boosted up or
heightened the idea of limits and boundaries by asserting the human
nature of the Messenger of God.
Also, the idea of the last message from Heaven to mankind has
been a great gift from Allah, as with which this man came to
possessed the ability to reconstruct the earth and to fulfill the notion of
Istikhlaf (succession on earth), as he was given enough lawful
knowledge from experience and the unseen sources.
All over through the history of mankind, religions have denied
and negated one another. And this has led to paths of blood as
believers of each faith stood in defense of their choice.
As for Islam, it did not deny or negate the Heavenly messages,
as it recognized Judaism and Christianity with some reservations
referring only to certain alterations that were added to the revelations
in the Holy Bible. Islam also built a fine relationship with the
followers of these two Heavenly religions who were to be judged by
their actions not by the title of their book. Thus, the Qur'an
differentiated between the closest in Mawada (love) and the severest
in Adawa (animosity).
Islam did not seek to promote conflicts with these two
religions. It protected their rights and made it compulsory for Muslims
to do so. Making the protection of Jews and Christians a Islamic
obligation is something that has never been experienced by the
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followers of any other religions all throughout the history of mankind
in dealing with or accepting 'the other'. Islam did also make
proselytizing (inviting non-Muslims to enter the Islamic faith) the
basis of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, with the
understanding that Islam forbade coercion in order to confirm that
liberty was to be protected and not to be violated even for such an
honorable objective.
Islam has also reconciled man with its basic instinct by
allowing man to quench his needs without falling into the swarms of
vice or into contradicting his own nature through self-mortification. It
also accorded man the right of ownership and possession through
making the relationship between man and society a creative not
conflictive relationship.
In addition spite of all such donations to mankind, at the levels
of faith and morality, Islam has had also contributed to emergence of
the dawn of science.
Islam made spreading knowledge a moral duty on the
believers, and established a punishment for those who do not help
propagate and disseminate knowledge. Islam by jugatesing the process
of acquiring and disseminating knowledge to the same moral Islamic
values; thereby dividing it into 'useful' versus 'unuseful' science, it did
a great service to the history of science. Living up to this high
standard, Muslims made their knowledge available to non-Muslim
peoples... , which was in part a cause of the reason why the West to
entered into renaissance.
Whoever goes back to the role of faith in these matters,
realizes that in Islam, God sends his messengers with His messages to
guide mankind to His path, to sustain sacrifices, to argue with their
opponents, to fight for their faith, and to even sacrifice their lives as a
price for guiding others.
If we are to compare this picture to the that of one portrayed
by Prometheus, who climbed up the mountain in order to steal the
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holy fire (the holy Torch) and bring it to the people..., we realize the
difference between the two pictures and how they affected the history
of Knowledge and the history of civilization in general.
By the same token, the issue of Monotheism did have a great
impact on the maturity of the experimental scientific approach
(‗scientific method‘) that led to the advancement of science and
knowledge. Monotheism preaches the idea that there is only one God,
who is the source of the knowledge and the laws according to which
our World runs.
Since God is an absolutely just, who does not favor any
individual over another or any group of people over the another, and
bestows His favors to on all of His creation, and since His knowledge
is available to all nations and to all classes, and His laws are fixed and
are not subject to change, Allah says:
"Do they then look for anything but GOD‘S way of dealing
with the peoples of old? But thou wilt never find any change in the
way of Allah; nor wilt thou ever find any alteration in the way of
Allah. .
.....then, the ability of man to know the laws of Allah must be
based on the right methodology.
There is no doubt that the issue of the cultural contribution of
Islam poses strongly a serious question about the state of
backwardness in which the Muslim World currently lives at the
present time. The prominent Islamic thinker Dr. Al Mazrou'i provided
us with some parts of the answer to this question in one of his lectures
delivered before at the cultural meeting in Abu Dhabi, the United
Arab Emirates, under the title: "Islam, Western Democracy and the
Third Industrial Revolution: Conflict or Cooperation".
He says: "It is customary to criticize the Muslims for not
reaching or attaining the best, while they never take a moment to
consider the worst that would have happened had it not been for the
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moral codes the Muslims have. Muslims never knew, for example,
Internment Camps in which the Nazis annihilated the 'other'. Is
Monotheism a shield for protection against human unbridled
corruption and debauchery?" Al-Mazrou'i goes at length to the
assertion that Islam is a barrier that prevents the worst".
Al-Mazrou'i asserts forcefully that Islam is a barrier that
prevents the worst from happening. Even Iif we go past beyond Dr. Al
Mazrou'i‘s the contribution of Dr. Al Mazrou'i into answering the
question, which gave dealt with only one side aspect of the Islamic
contribution, while Islam did indeed give humanity more. Our current
state of affairs and backwardness should not be the criterion by with
which to judge Islam. After all, my attempt has been triggered by the
answer provided by Al Mazrou'i on the one hand and by the repeated
attacks on Islam that we see in the Western media.
I ask Allah to benefit the world with my humble answer.
Mamdouh El-Shikh
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24
Section 1
Mercy:
A Message of Civilization
25
26
Chapter 1
The Message of Mercy: Meaning and
Characteristics
Allah has sent Mohammad (God's peace be upon Him) and
made Him the Seal of the Prophets and made his message the last to
be conveyed from Heaven to Earth. Allah made His messenger a
guide and a mercy for mankind; describing Him in the Holy Qur'an as
such in a wonderful Arabic style where in which the sentence included
a negation and an exception at the same time. Allah states: "And we
have sent thee not but as a mercy for all peoples", the rein indicating
that the prophet has only been sent as a mercy (Rahma) to all of God's
creation.
The prophet himself used to say: "Oh Ye who believe ... I am
but a gift of mercy (to you)". And since the message is mercy to all
humanity, the prophet himself is sent to as a mercy to all mankind.
The Holy Qur'an mentioned the word Rahm (the genesis of Rahma
which means mercy) 300 times: a mercy in his message, in his
teachings, and in his rulings (shar'iah).
What is the meaning, then, of mercy, and a mercy to whom?
The word Rahma is derived from the linguistic origin (R. H.
M.) which encompasses the following meanings: tenderness, passions,
and sympathy; to have mercy on someone means to be tender and
sympathetic towards him or her.
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In terminology, the word Rahma is defined by some as, "the
will to do good", others define it as, "a manner composed of fear and
love". As such, this manner is usually directed towards someone
whose behavior is not straightforward; for Rahma is love mixed with
detestation of certain actions of whomever it is directed to. Ibn ElQayyim, the great Muslim scholar, may Allah be pleased with him,
says: "Mercy is a tribute through which benefits could be conveyed to
people even though they find it difficult to put up with".
This is actually the true meaning of mercy; where the most
merciful among the people is he who might be tough on you in order
to guard your interests and ward off evil away from you. It is like a
father's mercy towards his son. A merciful father might go to the limit
of beating up or chastising his son in order to prevent him from
inflicting damage on, or attracting evil to, himself... and if he fails to
do so with his son, he would be less merciful towards his own son
even if he claims to love his son and works for his welfare and
prosperity.
Al-Kafawy says: "Mercy is an affective state that exists only in
those whose hearts are tender enough to possess certain psychological
inclinations known as Ihsan or the willingness to do good deeds for
mankind".
The concept of mercy in Islam is not limited to tenderness as
opposed to cruelty or severity of heart: sending Al-Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation) (The holy Ghost) by Allah to his prophets is mercy itself.
Allah says in the Qur'an:
"Truly, we revealed it in a blessed Night. Truly, We have
EVER been warning AGAINST EVIL. By Our OWN command.
Verily, we have ever been sending MESSENGERS, In it all wise
things are decided, As a mercy from thy Lord. Verily, He is the AllHearing, the All-knowing".
The concept of mercy is extended so as to become a knowing
stand composed of both mind and soul whose fruits are not only being
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merciful to or friendly to others, but also encompassing guidance to
the straight path as an inherent meaning of it. Allah says:
"Our Lord, let not our hearts become perverse after Thou hast
guided us; and bestow on us mercy from myself; surely, Thou alone at
the Bestower.
Guidance, here, is a mercy from Allah sent with the best of
mankind (the prophets) the God's creation. He says:
"He said, Oh my people, tell me: if I stand on a clear proof
from my Lord and He has bestowed upon me from Himself a great
mercy which has been rendered obscure to you, shall we force it upon
you, while you are averse thereto?
Could 'obscurity' or ;'blindness' to be with regard to the truth or
to feelings?
Mercy, here is a guidance from Allah. And since mercy cannot
be subject to aversion or repugnance by anybody, the verse is simply
addressing those who hate mercy and are shy of guidance with
regarding all such concepts comprised of facts related to the seen and
the unseen worlds.
Still one of the meanings of Rahma (Mercy) in the Holy
Qur'an is honesty and candor, which cannot be betrayed by those
prophets who were commanded to relay it to the people. For they must
live up to its precepts and commandments; Allah says to one of his
prophets:
"He said, ‗O my people, tell me: if I stand on a clear proof
from my Lord, and He has granted me mercy from Himself, who then
will help me against Allah, if I disobey Him? So you will not but add
to my destruction.
Therefore, one of the signs of the mercy of Allah is that He
does not ever take that mercy/guidance away from his prophets (after
granting it to them). Allah states:
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"And if we pleased, we could certainly take away that which
we have revealed to thee AND then thou wouldst find in THE
MATTER no guardian for thee against Us ... Except mercy from thy
Lord. Surely, His grace towards thee is great."
And in the story related about Prophet Moses (peace be upon
Him) who met with the Goodman, Allah made knowledge
Synonymous with or identical to mercy;: Allah says:
"Then found they one of our servants upon whom We had
bestowed Our mercy, and whom We had taught knowledge from Our
self ... Moses said to him, ‗May I follow thee on condition that thou
teach me of the guidance which thou hast been taught?"
Likewise, one of the basic features of the Holy Qur'an is that
knowledge and mercy go hand in hand almost in almost all relevant
verses of the Holy scriptures. A feature that is described as
comprehensive from the unseen world to the seen one;: Allah says
about Himself:
"It is God, the Gracious ... Who has taught the Qur‘an ... He
has created man ... He has taught him plain speech."
An offshoot of the meaning of Al-Rahman (one of the holiest
names of God) is that He teaches man. Of course, Had the meaning of
Rahma, here, been an absolute one, Allah could have said that that he
'had mercy on man' instead of saying that 'He taught man'. But, Allah
has made of the fruits of his mercy that He teaches man. In another
Verse, Allah combines mercy with knowledge as He says:
"He is Allah, and there is no God beside Him, the Knower of
the unseen and the seen (worlds). He is the most Gracious, the most
Merciful."
The Angels of Allah, by the same token, as they praise God's
Holy Names as He taught them, they say:
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"Our Lord, Thou dost comprehend all things in Thy mercy and
knowledge. So forgive those who repent and follow Thy way; and
protect them from the punishment of Hell."
Knowledge itself as a mercy from Allah is one of the best gifts
from Allah to His prophet, to the believers and to mankind. Allah
revealed a lot of the knowledge of the unseen world to His prophet in
order that he may be a Warner to humanity and be a helper in its
guidance, He says:
"And thou was not at the side of the Mount when We called.
But we have sent thee as a mercy from thy Lord, that thou may warn a
people to whom no Warner had come before thee, that they may
reflect."
The real mercy is to save and individual and humanity (from
going astray) with a worldly message whose distinctive sign is mercy.
He is determined to show mercy to his creation; He says: "He has
taken upon Himself TO SHOW mercy".
Universality of His mercy:
Allah has made the mercy of the prophet (peace be upon Him)
general, comprehensive and universal: one that it is not founded on the
basis of race, color or sect; one that is not reserved for the Arabs and
excluding non-Arabs, nor is it reserved for Muslims while excluding
non-Muslims, or for the East while ostracizing the West. It is a mercy
for all mankind with no distinction whatsoever. In that respect, L.
Faghleery says:
"The Qur'anic verse which refers to the universality of Islam as
the religion revealed by Allah to his prophet Muhammad (a mercy to
all mankind) is a direct call to the entire world. And this is a solid
proof that Mohammad must have felt certain that his message is
destined to go beyond the limits of the Arab World and that he must
have felt that his duty was to convey that new message to different
peoples speaking different languages."
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The prophet's tradition (Al-Sunnah) clears clarifies the picture
as it presents the whole image of the educational process embodied in
what the Holy prophet has did when he introduced to humanity the
merciful Muslim and the merciful nation (Ummah). Anas Ben Malik
narrated that the Holy Prophet had said: "I swear by Allah that Allah
does not place his mercy except in a the heart of a merciful", and he
was reminded of the fact that mercy exist in all humans, He said: "not
that mercy with which one of you shows only towards his
companion(s), but the mercy to be shown to all mankind".
One of the basic features of the mercy of the Holy Prophet
(peace be upon Him) is that it is just and balanced; He was merciful
without being weak, humble without humility, a fighter who never
committed treachery, a politician who never told a lie... He would use
warlike tactics but never goes back on his words or promises ... His
opponents trust his honesty and straight forwardness as he combines
(his own) deliberation with a sincere reliance on God, worship with
hard work, war with mercy.
Such was the right moral description of the Prophet (peace be
upon Him). It is a system of a group ethics that work together in a
coordinated and harmonious way to perform a certain function; where
no one single trait can marginalize or overcome other traits, nor does
it work against the other traits of the entire personality of the Prophet.
The Quran and the Sword are reconciled in his call: the first
(the Qur'an) in his hands is a book of guidance to whoever wants to be
guided; and the second (the sword) is for deterring the enemies who
wait for a chance to attack Muslims. A sign of balance in His mercy
was that he was merciful in all his moods and states of minds: he was
merciful before and after his commission, before and after his victory
over the peoples of Mecca, in victory or in defeat, in opulence or
hardship, at home or abroad....
George Hannah refers to this balance in the personality of the
prophet (peace be upon Him) by saying: He did not choose to turn his
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left cheek to whomever hits him on the right cheek... He walked in his
way unafraid carrying in one of his hands a message of guidance to
those who are at peace with him, and in the other hand he was
carrying a sword to fight with it only those who fight him. A few
small number of people believed in him at the inception of his call and
they all received an equal share of persecution and torture... they were
the seed of the Muslim religion and the torch of from which the
message of Muhammad took off.
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34
Chapter 2
His Mercy in the Field of Civilization
Mohammad's message came as the last in a series of messages
sent by Allah for the guidance of mankind. The Qur'an is full of
stories of Prophets and Messengers (peace be upon all of them) who
fulfilled that the function of guiding people to the right path. Some of
these prophets even sacrificed their lives and became martyrs for this
noble cause.
Allah told his Prophet 'Mohammad' that he revealed in the
Holy Qur'an that only some of the names of such prophets and
messengers were mentioned while the names of many other prophets
were not mentioned.
Following the detailed depiction of these prophets and
messengers in the Qur'an as 'guides' to mankind may contribute to our
understanding and appreciation of the difference between this
depiction of and the Western deep-rooted Western model of the
relationship between Heaven and earth, without having to equalize
treat the inspiration of Allah to as the moral equivalent of the strays of
Western paganism. Indeed, humanity has been preoccupied with the
issue of God's Messengers to mankind as much as with the issue of the
'seen' and the 'unseen' worlds.
This image of prophets and messengers being chosen and sent
by Allah (to guide and save mankind), supported by His word and
miracles, and with His promise to administer justice among all
mankind in the hereafter... in the face of this image there was, in is
posed by the Western thinking, involving Prometheus, who was,
35
according to the Greek mythology, merely a thief who robbed God of
fire and then taught men how to use it afterwards.
The myth goes on to pretend that the ruler of all Greek Gods,
'Zeus', chastised Prometheus, and changed him and sending an eagle
to tear up his liver, which was in a state of constant renewals until
Heraclius Heracles came to his rescue him from that punishment.
Prometheus was one of the resourceful and smart Greek 'Gods'
who has been described as superior to all other 'Gods'. In one of his
contemplations, Prometheus, the myth goes continues, Prom the us
wanted to create something by holding a fistful of dust, kneading it
with rainwater, and coming out of rain.... making out of that dough: a
male and a female following in the image of God; animals looking
down with their and always facing the earth all the time or creeping
over it, (the earth) and seeing nothing but it, while he created the
human beings looking always up toward Heaven....
Having done with his creation, Prometheus went up to Heaven
and, broke into the sun, making from which he made a torch with
which he descended to earth, and gave it to humanity as a gift for their
benefit; a gift that is better than the feathers, furs, speed, agility, and
power that animals have... When Zeus learnt of the robbery (of fire)
he was surprised, got and angry, and decided to punish Prometheus
by tying him up to a rock at the peak of a high mountain which no
human foot can could reach.
Then an eagle with a steel beak was to visit Prometheus every
day to cut open his abdomen and, tear up his liver, which would
returns every night to its before normal shape and so on for about 30
thousand years, until Heracleius (the killer of the lion of Nemea, and
Hydra with its nine heads!) came to his rescue through cutting his
steel fetters with his polished sword and setting him free.
This story of Prometheus indicates a sort type of belief
entertained by many nations for centuries. Until our Even today, there
are many cultures in the world, however, still haunted by such
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superstitions based on of the existence of a conflict between heaven
and earth, referred to by some as "attempts to steal fire from heaven".
Here, we can clearly see the most important signs of the
message of the civilized mercy of Islam which sets man free from
such irrational beliefs... a matter of a double positive effect as it closes
the door to human fears from the unknown, and to ignorance which
occurs through keeping science and knowledge as only a privilege of
only a few closed elites in in society.
For as there was the 'holy fire' on the mount of Olympus, there
also was, according to the same tradition, a caste or a class of priests
who monopolized knowledge and used it in the subjugation of other
people through deluding them that they alone know knew the secrets
of the universe.
Let's now read the following story from a book written by the
American author Richard Knox under the title: "The Book of Time".
He wrote:
"Egyptian astronauts observed, during the long years of their
work, that the Solar and Lunar eclipses follow a cycle that takes
approximately 18 years and 11 days to be complete. Every eclipse
forms a part of a series of eclipses in which the sites of the sun, the
moon, and the earth change in relation to each other due to a gradual
and irregular change. This cycle which was known as Al-Saroos, was
kept secret being known only to the priests in the Pharaonic Temples
as part of other knowledge they used to possess or monopolize. And
this kind of monopoly of such knowledge of secrets gave the priests
incredible power (over the rest of the people) not only to predict the
movements of the skies, but also to tell other people that God (the
Sun) was going to be hidden from his people due to their sins. Then,
when the eclipse occurs, the priests dictate on to the people what they
should do in order to get the Sun (their God) shining back."
To confront (and hopefully to forever remove) such
superstitions and delusions, which the ancient Greeks believed to be
37
running their lives from the top of the mountain of Olympus, or the
priests in Egypt who used such knowledge as means of suppressing
others, Heavenly religions, with their last message of Islam, came to
grant humanity its real mercy.
This was only one sort of fortune telling in which science and
knowledge were used as means to suppression of the public and which
Islam played a major role in putting an end to it through placing
knowledge and science within the confines of moral responsibility,
and through establishing a sanction against those who suppress
knowledge and does not attempt to propagate them. Subjugating
knowledge to the same moral standards and dividing it into two parts:
'useful' and 'unuseful'.parts of knowledge...,
Islam rendered a great service to mankind. Based on this
conviction, Muslims were able to convey to other civilizations all of
their knowledge without hiding any parts of their knowledge. Arab
and Muslim knowledge were undeniably instrumental in the
advancements of the other civilizations (in the West) haves witnessed
thus far. To be sure, the West did not need Prometheus to steal this
knowledge as we (the Muslims) carried it to them believing that it was
our legitimate duty to do so for the welfare of human civilization.
Whoever goes back to the role played by the Islamic faith in
this, realizes that in the Islamic creed, God sends His messengers to
guide mankind with Heavenly messages for which the messengers
messenger forebear a lot and persevere long, argue with their
opponents, and fight if necessary, and sometimes they sacrifice their
lives for the cause of guiding others.
If this depiction is compared to that outlined in the story of
Prometheus who climbs up the mountain in order to steal the holy fire
and bring it back to the people, the different image of Islam appears in
its shiniest brightest form as the effect of that difference on the history
of science, knowledge and on human civilization in general, becomes
clearer and more obvious and more noticeable.
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Let's also contemplate over this rare and unique testimony
about of the liberation liberating role of Islam. After 35 years of
teaching and doing research in the Arabic and Islamic World,
professor of Archeology Abdullah Taleb Donald Kohl, whose name
before he converted to Islam was only Donald Kohl, was able to
pronounce the Shahadatein (the words of monotheism) at Al-Azhar.,
He says:
"The grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar received me and I testified
before him that I henceforth accepted Islam as my religion... and when
he asked me about my journey to Islam and why it took me a long
time to convert, I was brief in my answer. Addressing me he said,
"You are a professor and we would like to know more details about
your story". I cried in front of him and so did my Egyptian friend who
accompanied me there. I told him that my grandfathers were among
the first European settlers to reside in Virginia, USA, and that they
had to flee from religious persecution and political intolerance in
Europe. They were able to establish a new society founded on
freedom and respect (for others), and here I am following in their
footsteps ... they travelled across the oceans and believed in the Holy
Bible but they did not the Qur'an. As for me, I knew the Qur'an and
my mission right now is to make it known to everybody."
The difference between Prometheus and the Messengers of
God (peace be upon them) is the difference between two paths in
dealing with the human race: 'Mercy' versus 'Cruelty', and 'Veneration
and regard' of man versus his 'Humiliation'.
The best that Prophet Mohammad brought to mankind is his
miraculous Book, the Qur'an. Mr. Wells, Professor of British law
Law, says:
"If a man wants to know something like this, he has to read the
Qur'an with which includes as scientific theories, laws, and systems
which society needs ... It is a Book on religion, and on science... it
deals with society, education, morality and history... with much of its
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laws and systemic reordering (of society) are in use to our time, and
will remain in use till the Day of Judgment. Can anyone find Islam as
to be contradicting progress and civilization in any of its teachings and
roles?"
Whether we restrict the scope of Islam only to Shar'iah as a
moral and legal code of ethics, or expand that scope as to include all
the entire Islamic view of civilization, we end up by reiterating what
Joseph Schacht had once said: "Islamic Shar'iah is the best gift from
Allah to mankind in the civilized world... it is distinctively and
idiosyncratically different from all forms of law to the extent that its
study is something that cannot be avoided if we are to have an a
comprehensive appraisal of legal matters... Islamic Shar'iah is
something unique in itself comprising all Godly commandments and
behests that organize the life of Muslims in all its respects, and as
such, it includes special rulings concerning worship, rituals, as well
some political and legal teachings".
Finally, we can also reiterate with Debora Potter that: "Islam
came up with the real and true Enlightenment in all scientific, cultural,
artistic fields of knowledge... an enlightenment which is
incomparable, unparalleled, and unsurpassed till our date... Between
the years 700 and 1400 A.D., when Europe was in a state of big
slumber during those dark ages known as the Middle Ages, Muslim
scientists were able to arrive at the scientific methodology of research
which replaced the useless logic which has prevailed since Greek
philosophers. This particular period (in which Islam appeared)
produced great men of knowledge who contributed to the erection of
our human civilization; getting their inspirational motives from the
Glorious Qur'an in all what that they did".
It is indeed, the bestowment of Mercy (Rahma) that Islam gave
to mankind to enlighten our lives as individuals or as groups.
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Section 2
What is Civilization?
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Chapter 1
Civilization: Meaning and Concept
What has Al-Islam has given to mankind?
A question that I have been striving for years to find an answer
to it. Despite the fact that Islam (the protected Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation)) is above all suspicion and that it does not need anyone to
defend it,; being a revelation from Allah who took it upon Himself to
defend it (at all times), the responsibility of clarifying its tenets and
precepts to mankind resides with those who believe in it and consider
it a legal obligation to do so, even if though Allah has promised to
keep the message of Islam intact secure from being tampered with.
As we mentioned before, many scholars, as they try to defend
Islam, take what Muslims have contributed to building human
civilization and consider it this to be the Islamic contribution to
civilization.
As a matter of fact, there is a difference between what
Muslims all over throughout their history have given to humanity and
what Islam as a religion has given that civilization. The first is the
human contribution of Muslims, while the latter is God's own
donation to mankind.
Muslims' achievements, important as they might be, are still
human achievements, even if though Islam as a creed played a role in
guiding these achievements and causing them to appear the way they
did. Islam paved the way to for Muslims to interact with others, and
greatly helped them a lot to produce their contribution to humanity,
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but they were only humans doing what they could to do well and to
excel themselves through competing with others.
Yet, Islam has its own offering to humanity which stands by
itself, with Muslims' role or roles limited only to unraveling it or
making it known to others. This is a matter in which Muslims' roles
differ from one Muslim to another in his ability to show that Godly
contribution to the prosperity, welfare and happiness of mankind. .
Irrespective of the pioneering and ground-breaking role played
by Muslims in handing over to non-Muslims (particularly the
Westerners) what is known as the experimental approach in the field
of science, and regardless of all Muslim contributions in all other
fields of knowledge... this represents only the fruit.
As for the seed of the Islamic contribution in the fields of
values and standardization, and in the components of erecting the
human civilization, one has to begin by encompassing that role which
necessitates that we define civilization.
Definition of Civilization:
For an accurate definition of civilization, one is faced with
many obstacles,: the first of which is what Professor A'ref sees as
misperception and confoundedness. He argues that this concept of
civilization has been described as one that has been intentionally
distorted with a view to erasing its true meaning and connotations.
Sometime, the concept hwas been given many valuejudgmental dimensions that have caused the concept to lose its
credibility and apply to many other contradicting things, processes and
systems rather than what the concept really means. The contradictions
in these things, processes and systems did not stop at the face-value
meaning of the concept, but they exceeded that and went beyond their
goals and objectives, consequences to of the basic components and
elements of the concept itself. Thus, the concept is in its final form
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looked like something very close to the term 'modernity', 'progress', or
'progressiveness'.
This concept, with all its salience and importance, ;being is a
pivotal one in human advancement and social, anthropological, and
humanitarian sciences such as sociology, psychology, urban
sociology, education,,, etc., being as the basic unit on which these
sciences are predicated or as the end that the subject matters of such
sciences seek to achieve.
There is another obstacles in defining civilization cited also be
by Dr. A'ref and having to do with the absence of any serious attempt
(on the part of scholars) to dissect this concept,; thereby rendering it to
open to analysis with a view to understanding its roots, its
connotations and meanings in our language and in other languages.
Due to the fact that the concept has many different aspects and
dimensions in different studies and cultures, any attempt at
scientifically and incrementally building this concept anew would
result merely in distorting the realities of its true meaning of the
concept as in doing so one in such a case stops at the linguistic and
syntactical meanings of the term, not as a term that has specific
accurate meaning or/meanings relating to urban, sociological, and
behavioral facts or realities that taken as a whole would describe the
movement of man across his history in the universe.
Moreover, many, including Alfred North Whitehead, believe
that there is an extreme difficulty in id defining this very familiar
concept, 'civilization'. The difficulty here comes from the meaning of
the term itself being complex and compound, and it was has been
customary to use it in different fields and through different forms and
types. With different people and different societies have assigned, the
concept was assigned different significance.
Meaning of Civilization: Al-Waseet Arabic dictionary defines
'civilization' as residing in urban centers ... civilization is the opposite
to primitiveness or nomadic life ... it is an advanced stage in the
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development of human sociology... it is also a sign of scientific,
artistic, and literary, and social progressiveness in urbanization.
The Concept of Civilization: Many branches of the humanities
have attempted to provide a definition of the concept; thus in the
philosophical dictionary issued by the Linguistic Assembly in Egypt,
gives it a very close definition provided by linguistic studies. Under
the term civilization, one finds the following:
a)
a.- civilization as opposed to nomadic life; it is the
opposite of barbarianism and cruelty and represents one of the stages
of human development.
b)
b.- it is a group of the scientific, artistic,. literary and
social manifestations that are transferred from one generation to
another in a certain society or in similar societies; thus, there are
Western civilizations and eastern civilizations, with every civilizations
possessing its own scope, languages, and classes. This source refers to
the meaning of culture as well.
In its reference to culture, the concept is defined as everything
that implies or contains an enlightenment of the mind. It, or elevating
elevation the human taste, or development of the talent of individuals
or societies to enable them to be critical with regard to all knowledge,
morals, and all aptitudes and abilities which the individual uses in his
or her society. It has ways of being assedions and practical models of
following spiritually and intellectually where how every generation
has derived its own culture derived from its past and present.
Culture becomes the address for human societies. The
difference between culture and civilization is that the first is
individualistic in nature, having to deal with spiritual aspects; while
the second deals basically with social and material issues.
In the Eencyclopedia politika, civilization is defined as, "it is
derived from urbanization and acculturation encompassing a group of
thoughtful, social, moral, and industrial achievements realized by a
46
certain society in its demarche towards progress end and
development".
Some scholars would like to use the term so as to indicate
cultural aspects, while others use it to denote the supremacy of the
human mind in society. The modern and contemporary use of
'civilization' concentrates on the technological advancements in
society as they produce lead to achievements in all other fields in life.
At the end, dereference is made to 'culture' and 'urbanity'. As
far as we are concerned, our analysis is restricted to what is the use
under of the term 'culture', because 'urbanity'the other term is not quite
related to our research.
According to this encyclopedia, 'culture' is the social
inheritance and the collective aggregate of all moral and material
activities of a certain society. The moral aspects include all spiritual,
thought philosophical, artistic, literary and value related achievements
produced by a certain society. This includes symbols, ideas, systems
and taste, ...etc. The other aspect, the material one, refers to the
production by a certain society of technical, economic (tools and
machines), houses, work places, weapons, .....etc.
As for the social framework within which culture itself is
produced – the continuous environment which is changeable from one
generation to another – this includes the institutions, the rituals, the
groups, and the types of social organization and ordering and which
form or shape the cultural civilization.
Culture, then, refers to the art of living and the experience
environment in which people would interact with its stages and
experiments. It is indeed a general outlook at on existence, life, and
man as well as to on man's position(s) towards with regard to all this.
This could be transferred into a belief system, to a creed or to a sect
(i.e. to a religion), or to a moral stand, or still to an artistic piece of
artwork, or to a literary masterpiece, or finally to a daily behavioral
lifestyle.
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This definition, materialistic as it seems ;(especially when it
comes to the basic elements that of which a civilization is composed
of), and despite its negligence of the unseen, has touched, despite its
negligence of the unseen, the essence of civilization, rather succinctly
when it described civilization it as a "comprehensive outlook to on the
existence of man and the universe". We will introduce our own
definition of the concept later in this research.
But, right now, let's concentrate on how the concept appeared
and how it was developed.
Development of the concept:
There is a myriad of books, old and new, that have tackled the
issue of defining civilization. The definitions are too many, and also
too confusing as well. Some of these definitions leaned towards the
concepts of culture or urbanization. Historically, there are those who
take the concept as relating to the Western culture, as when Mirabeau
in 1757 formulated the term in a message that with the title of: "A
friend to mankind or a thesis about population", in which he
considered religion as the "first motivator of civilization". Therefore,
the term has been often been used to denote making life in the cities
less violent, and more refined and developed.
Perhaps Rabeau Saint Etian was more accurate when he used
the term in his messages to Silvan Baye about the old history of the
primitive Greeks as he was studying the epoch in which man moved
from the state of rawness and primitiveness to the state of civilization.
Also, at the end of the 18th century, we that find that Folny, in his
rebuttals to of Rousseau, saw it preferred to confine the definition of
civilization within the limits of combating violence, reaching the
conclusion that civilized people are only those who enjoy just laws
and have regular governments.
The word 'civilization' in the Anglo Saxonian culture, is not
and old word for. As late as 1772, an author of one of the dictionaries
refused to accept it and file it in his dictionary, preferring to use
48
instead of it the word 'civility', which was (to him) equal equivalent to
the word 'urbanity', as both words carried a degree of contempt and
disdain of on the part of city dwellers towards the villagers – both
terms were considered as inducing abhorrent and disgusting feelings
towards others.
Such expressions may be acceptable only in a context where in
which urbanity develops only in the atmosphere or the environment of
the city; since the hard work associated with the village does not
usually suit city dwellers, who need to find some leisure time for their
entertainment and social communication with other people, which are
essential for hosting new ideas and discoveries.
The diversity of French, German, and Anglo Saxonian social,
anthropological and ethnological schools did have an effect on making
it difficult to find an equivalent of to the word civilization. British and
German scholars agree that 'culture' or 'Kultur' means civilization,
which is also equal to 'urbanity'.
The French, however, do not differentiate between the two
terms; thereby taking them to gives having an interchangeable
meaning, while reserving the term 'culture' to stand as it is and denote
a different sense. The accelerated technical advancement had also
added a difficulty not only to reaching a definition of 'civilization', but
also to separating 'urbanity' from 'civilization' it.
This has been laid down succinctly by Taylor, the Great
British anthropologist, by saying: "civilization is the complex whole
that includes knowledge, religion, art, morals, law, and traditions". In
a decisive word, McIver delineates clearer limits, saying: "Urbanity
comprises politics, economics, and technology ... while civilization
comprises literature, religion, and morality... or differently put,
'urbanity' is what we use, while 'civilization' is what we are".
It was in 1953 that, the publishers of the Encyclopedia
Britannica distributed James Harvey Robinson's booklet on
'civilization'. The booklet was later translated into the Arabic language
49
and carried the same title 'Al-Hadhara'. In the preface of to the
booklet, Robinson stated, "the Encyclopedia Britiannica in itself is a
description of civilization for it included the story of mankind, its
works and its astonishing developments".
Robinson also adds another dimension to the concept by
saying: "Biologists decided lately that those people who did not reside
in cities like the tribes of Polynesia and the Indians of North Africa
did in fact have a high civilization of their own. And if their lifestyle
and their living conditions were studied without bias, it would be
discovered that they did have a language that spells out their views
accurately; that they have arts that suits their own environment to a
degree that deserves admiration; that they have social and political
institutions; and that they believe in religions and myths which are not
better or worse than what we see in other parts of the world or in
Europe for example. It was Mr. Taylor who was the first among those
who speak English to draw the attention to such a fact in 1871 in his
famous work "the Primitive Culture" which appeared simultaneously
with Darwin's book, "The Origin of Species". These two books did
have an impact on giving the term 'civilization' a deeper meaning than
what the word enjoyed before".
Robinson's talk about civilization should be considered a
model for studying many phenomena in relation to the concept for the
following reasons:
1 - The phenomenal use of Deduction instead of Induction was
remarkable indeed. Whoever Anyone who knows aware where Islam
stands with regard to this area, will find know that Islam clearly leans
towards the use of 'deduction' from the world around us; with the
understanding that that world is m\not limited to the materialistic
world only, nor does it imply that such a world is the only source of
knowledge. In Islam, one has to use his one‘s senses and his intuition
to perceive facts and universal laws at the same time. This means, of
course, learning from the experiments of others and also seeking to
51
learn the partial material facts and calling striving to perceive the
entire universe that surrounds man as a whole.
Using one's senses is not separated from one's 'previous
convictions'. Thus, taking being able to perceive partial or holistic
facts or the universal laws is dependent on being free from any preconceived superstitions or irrational beliefs. We have been told by our
scholars of jurisprudence and Shar'iah that "judging anything is totally
dependent on the image formed about it"; therefore, if the image of
anything is distorted, or confused or mixed-up, our judgments would
will necessarily be necessarily erroneous and mistaken.
2 - Tampering with the standards used in the classification of
phenomena through equalizing treating between truth and falsehood as
equal, as if this is part of sticking to a scientific methodology.
Actually, it is the objectivity or neutrality that is recommended in this
area. And the true 'neutrality' towards those similar phenomena which
necessitate the differentiation between Heavenly as opposed to nonheavenly religions, is a position to be taken willingly by the scholar
who knows what he is really doing.
Equalizing between Treating as equal right and wrong, or
between truth and falsehood, is something rejected strongly and
robustly by Islam. Ibn Hazm, under the title of -'Speech against those
who speak of equal evidence', - says: "Some take it to advance the
argument of equal evidence which means that one cannot be a priori
on the side of, or for, a certain sect or a certain article unless a clear
distinction of truth from falsehood is apparently visible, and that all
articles or arguments are equal in evidence ... they also say that
anything proven through argumentation can be nullified through the
same way. These were divided into three groups: the first spoke of
equal evidence in all they disagree on; therefore, they could or did not
either prove or negate the existence of God, or the truthfulness of the
prophet hood of his prophets... and so on with all religions and issues,
they neither proved nor denied anything. All they could do was that he
51
asserted that the truth is there in some of these arguments but it is not
clearly evident, apparent, or distinctive, they could not confirm its
existence".
3 - Substituting 'unseen' of revelations (Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation)) with the 'unseen' in science. The philosophy of science
in the 20th century witnessed the emergence of a school of thought
that connected the status of the scientific laws to the methods we use
in order to arrive at such laws. Adherents of this school looked for any
'preconceived ideas' (the unseen of science) to find its their way into
their scientific system of analysis under the 'guise' of definitions,
classifications, or standardization that would guarantee the existence
of truth.
Some of them even went on to claim that no knowledge could
ever exist without interpretation (!), and that such interpretation
depends on these 'preconceived ideas' or the 'unseen' even if the
specialists in the philosophy of science preferred not to use the
nomenclature. And there are those who express this fact more frankly;
for example, Dr. P. Sabine says: "Both religion and science are based
on faith".
However, Dr. Charles Hartowns, says: "Faith in science
became a spontaneous or unplanned thing even if people do not see
that: for in science, there is faith which is not new but as old as remote
centuries... and if a scientist has no faith, he would find himself amidst
the superstitions that are based on a pretension that the universe lacks
order...But we cannot prove, through a solid and logical method, that
the universe is orderly and logical...we pretend to say that and
consider as such finding our deeds agree with the facts around us... we
cannot prove this... it is in fact faith".
With regard to the Darwinian theory specifically, we cannot
say it is the 'word of science'. This has been discussed in the book of
Dr. Polkinghome‘s book, 'Beyond science' where he says, in
answering his question: 'A Chance or the Existence of a Great
52
Creator?', "among the results of the religious methodology that I
believe in and follow, is the belief that life has had purpose and
significance all over the history of mankind... and there has been a
time in which such ideas were supported by scientific discoveries.
That Newton was able to extract a simple law of universal gravity
from the movement of the planets in our solar system, this led him to
look at the issue as a magnificent geometrical design. He wrote this in
an appendix of his work 'the 'The Pprincipia' saying: "the magnificent
system of the sun, the planets, and the comets, cannot come into
existence without a purpose and power of a pondering Creator who
commands and controls everything in existence not as a spirit of the
universe, but as the possessor of everything".
Darwinism is nothing but a theoretical hypothesis which
cannot categorically be proven through a solid evidence. It is a sort of
'scientific unseen'.
The difference between this 'unseen' and the 'unseen' that
comes out of heavenly revelation is that the latter comes from a 'divine
source', and was transferred to us through an 'immune' carrier. If
science would stipulate that 'heavenly revelations' should be rejected
because they do not conform to the scientific conditions laid down by
scientists, then J. H. Robinson would have had to reject the Darwinian
theory for the same reason and because it contradicts the rule of
neutrality which science requires.
Robinson wrote under the title: 'The new understanding of
"'civilization"', saying: "The opinion that says that primitive people
lead primitive and naive lives has been gradually replacing the old
opinion that was based on Jewish traditions and asserting that men and
women were created with fully developed minds and that they knew
how to speak and communicate. This belief has still many adherents
who accept it and defend it in Europe and in the USA".
Robinson adds that: "It was believed that man was given mind
and perception which made him distinctive from animals which can
53
really do strange things with the help of its instinct (not through the
help of a reasoning mind or perception). Everything the animal does is
through instinct. .... but if we accept that man, as a result of many
considerations, lived from a long time in the past and he used to live
and behave like animals and beasts... then he asks a question that goes
like this: could it be that man's mind and his ability (behind all this)?
or.... Could it be that it is only a different name for whatever
information, beliefs and conduct and the like, he was able to gather
and analyze? This means that we have to understand the human mind
and perception as part of human civilization and its progress exactly
as we understand the automobile or the Parliament".
This means that nature created man and man 'invented'
civilization. And aside from equalizing treating 'opinion' as equal with
'faith', the writer seems to be willing – mainly – to deny the idea of
revelation (Wahi (Heavenly Revelation)), even if that Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation), according to him, means only the interpolated Torah and
Gospel; which means to us that the writer is a captive of his Western
experience when it comes to religion as related to Western knowledge.
He, like many other secular Western writers, prefers to avoid
the issue of creation even if he has to replace it with yet another
obscure 'unseen' idea in his hypothetical trajectory from 'instinct' to
'reason'. This kind of avoidance is the result of an historical thoughtful
dysfunction in thought caused by the distorted Christian control over
the Western mind, as Europe understood from religion only from how
it was taught by the church and the clergy.
Whatever they introduced presented as Christianity was did
not in fact heartening encourage to faith. The clergy introduced a very
complex and unfathomable divinity... Christianity, according to the
clergy, is full of ragged contradictions between body and spirit.
It also separated the church from the state, and refused to
express any opinion regarding political, economic or social conditions.
Furthermore, the clergy presented a shaky image of God, a human
54
God or a son of man who was crucified for the 'sins' of mankind. In
such an image, nothing could excite people to be submissive to the
'teachings' and the 'rulings' of such a 'God'.
This might explain to us the reason for why Europe ignored
Christianity as a driving force for reform or as hegemonic over the
souls of people. A human God, according to the writer, could be
captive to human imagination, as he would be one like us, equal to us,
could be democratic or constitutional, and he would cooperate with us
on equal footing.
Thus, the good pagan fails. The writer goes on to elaborate,
saying: "anyone reading the Sunday religious article in the papers,
would usually find expressions like 'my God should'... or 'I do not
accept a God who is' ..." Another writer spoke of "the liberal
Christianity", which maintains the colleges of 'religion' and neglects
its 'essence'.
This writer authored a book in which he proved that the
greatest mistake ever committed by mankind during the last four
centuries, with all the dire consequences of such mistakes, was that
man – and not God – was placed on the top of the universe.
Civilization would never be able to get rid of the disasters plaguing it
unless it attempted to correct that mistake.
It is regrettable that most of thinkers who realized this
imperfection could not find a solution (to it), and they themselves kept
running in the same vicious circle because the Light, the only Light,
that would have to get them out of such a dark labyrinth was Islam.
As a result of European rejection of the distorted image
presented by the church, and because of its ignorance of the true
image that of Islam, the Europeans preferred being to see themselves
as the illegitimate sons of a straying random chance, to being the
crown prince on the throne of 'a claimed big lie', ...hence his clinging
to the idea the development imagining that life could have started on
earth by chance or haphazardly".
55
This took place when "some two billion years ago some living
molecules joined together in order to form a cell or a very tiny being
comprising a nucleus immersed in a drop of a liquid and surrounded
by an embryo.... and from this huge and fast developing event
emerged all relative unicellular beings. And these cells, with the
passage of time, began to be different from one another and began to
have its own characteristics which differentiate it from other cells,
judged it was better for them to join together – according to the
principle of the division of labor – in order to complement each
other... and thus, the multi-cellular beings came into existence".
Thus, the Western man, preferred all these long hypothetical
journeys over billions of years, .he preferring to stay remain in a state
of darkness with obscurity encompassing it from all sides, with only
chances or hypotheses that canto get him out of it.
According to Dr. Hussein Mu'ness, "most of today's scientists
agree that man constitutes a self-standing species; since the gap
between him and the Great Apes is wider than we can supposedly be
able to cross it with the missing link..… the truth is that the similarity
between man and the Great Apes is farfetched, while the similarity
between them and the rest of the animals is stronger. It is worth
noting, in this regard, that Genealogical lines and the indecent
propinquities among animal factions are generally unproven, and that
biologists are doing corrections and modifications to their findings
continuously..… and that there are hundreds of kinds of animals
which are not classified according to which species they belong.
Therefore, there is sense in insisting on linking man to apes or vice
versa".
Among the Western thinkers, Alfred North Whitehead is
considered an ideal model in his opposition to the concept of
development as the basis for the emergence and trajectory of
civilization, for to which he has his own definition, as he differentiates
between a civilized man and a civilized society: He says: "A civilized
56
man or society is a one controlled by the following distinctive
qualities: sincerity, beauty, adventures, art, and peace". It is obvious
that he was concerned mainly with the Western man and Western
society.
In his critique of the theory of development as a basis for the
understanding of civilization, he sees that the theory that says that not
adapting to the environment causes the extinction of the living being)
is nothing but a generalization that is useless to for the purpose of
explanation.
To him, the theory was used as an easy rule with which one
can apply to almost everything without having to sustain the heavy
burden of research and investigation about the causes that lead to the
extinction of a certain being. The theory of 'survival of the fittest'
needs to be critically revisited, for mere survival does not mean
superiority: A as tone, for example, can last for centuries ... longer of
course than the human being who does not enjoy the fortitude and
endurance of the stone.
Whitehead bases his position against this developmental logic
on confirming the 'unseen' dimension of civilization; namely on the
existence of God. He goes back to re-stress the qualities he chose for
defining the civilized society – the ideals of the high civilization –
saying that "they constitute one side of the everlasting universe that
God has made available to all actually existing beings that can use
such things and move them from mere patent ideals into ideals that
can be realized".
The adaptation idea referred to in Whitehead's exegesis is
close to the idea of subjugation (Taskheer) referred to by the Qur'an,
which is a gift of Allah to mankind, and the disappearance of which
from the Western thought led to the existence, in the Western jargon,
of certain vocabulary such as 'conflict with', 'control of', and 'the
defeat of' nature, ....which finally ended up with ultimately resulted in
57
the environmental, historical dysfunction which humanity is
experiencing (and suffering from).
Subjugation, or Taskheer in Islam, does offer a Godly answer
to the questions frequently asked and which perplexed those who
decided to exclude the revelation (Wahi (Heavenly Revelation)) from
their attempts to understand civilization. Taskheer includes:
a -– Creation of the universe;
b -– Paving the Earth;
c - Providing for all means of living on earth;
d - Instituting the principle of espousing for reproduction;
e - Creation of the cattle and making it the easy to domesticate.
Allah says:
"And among men there is he who disputes concerning Allah
without knowledge and without guidance and without an enlightening
Book".
In this Verse, there is a connection between denying Taskheer
and disputing concerning Allah without guidance and without an
enlightening Book.
58
Chapter 2
Islamic Meaning of Civilization
Arab culture knew two distinctive stories of civilization; the
first: when the term was born and introduced by Ibn Khaldun( ) in the
Eighth Century of Hijrah (around the 14th century A.D.); and the
second: when the term came to us from the West in the 19th century.
Abdurrahman Ben Khaldun was the first to attempt to devise
the concept of civilization in the Arabic and Islamic culture. This was
even before the Western attempts, which referred to the term as
'civilization', as 'culture' or as 'urbanity'.
Therefore, we will begin by with Ibn Khaldun's contribution as
a separate phase in the history of the concept; for the concept came to
our culture laden and overloaded with many ideas of Western origins.
In his introduction, he talked at length about civilization or (AlHadharah). Under the title of "the nomads preceded city dwellers", he
says:
"Nomads are those who are satisfied with the necessary for
their living, and are unable to reach out for beyond that.... while urban
dwellers are those who seek luxuries and perfection in their living...
and since the 'necessary' is the origin and the 'luxurious' is an offshoot
(of it), nomads are the origin of cities and urban centers and came
before them. Man seeks the necessary first, and when that necessary is
provided, then he looks, beyond it, for luxuries;, therefore, the
roughness of nomadic life must have preceded the tenderness of urban
civilization.... until now, therefore, we observe that urbanity is a goal
59
for the nomadic towards which he runs with big strides and ends up
with his ideas about it".
Ibn Khaldun, while weighing these peoples out from the
vantage point of goodness, taking takes sides with the nomads on the
grounds that man's instinct has always naturally been inclined to
accept whatever good or evil that comes to it; Urban people because
of what urban people they sustain from luxuries and their love for life,
leads to their individual selves became becoming colored and
tarnished with many stains which took take them away from the path
of Goodness, to the extent that they utter bad words, are less ashamed
of their flaws, and they boast themselves about their sins and bad
conduct, even before their close friends or intimate relatives. And the
Nomads, even if their love for life exists like city dwellers, they are
more conservative and overprotective of themselves, satisfying
themselves only with what is necessary, and are very close to the early
instinct of man and far away from being described lacking bad
manners, so they are easier y to cure than the dwellers of cities.
Ibn Khaldun sides once again with the nomads when he claims
that they are more courageous than city dwellers; thus, in chapter two
(of his book) he relays to us this idea almost with the similar logic, as
he says for city dwellers: "Sustaining rules spoils and ruins their
strength and vigor".
Taking sides in this way reflects a degree of less limited
understanding on the part of Ibn Khaldun of the contractual
significance of the Madinah document which gave Right a degree of
saliency over Might; thereby ending a period of time in which Might
created and used Right(s), which has always been one of the traits of
swelling involved in expanding a city.
This, however, does not mean that those who live in the city
the loss of e strength and vigor of those who live in the city, but
instead it means less resorting to violence, and reliance, instead, on
other more humane means to preserve peace and order.
61
In the second chapter, he repeats and confirms the same idea,
as he says:
"Encroaching of people on one another in cities and urban
centers, is prevented by the rulers and the state as they possess the
power over their subjects; thereby preventing them from being
infringed upon unless such an infringement comes from the rulers
themselves".
Ibn Khaldun goes further than this, in over-praising nomads,
without an acceptable justification, when, building on his previous
argument that nomads are braver and more courageous than city
dwellers, he reserves a chapter of his book to talk about "Barbarian
nations are more able to overcome".
Thus, he says: since no madism is the cause of bravery, as we
have said that in the third introduction, it is not surprising that this
rowdy generation is braver that the other, as they are more able to
overcome and to extract what is in the hands of other nations, and that
the conditions of the same generation differ according the age it lives
in ... so long as they live in the villages and get used to luxurious
living circumstances, their bravery dwindles and gets reduced
commensurately with their losses in nomadism and roughness or
rowdiness.
You can appreciate this if you take the story of wild animals
that, immediately as they mix with domestic animals (like such
asdeers, and cows, and poultry), they lose some of their wildness, as
for mixing with human beings affects even the way these animals
walk.
It is exactly the same with the human being if he lives in a
state of welfare and opulence. The reason for this is that their nature
and qualities are earned (and not innate or intrinsic in them)... And if
endurance and survivability of nations are the result of bravery, then
whoever among these generations is more immersed in nomadism is
61
more closer to overcoming and enduring than the other.... if they are
close in terms of numbers and equal in Asabyiah.
Such a dispossession of force from everything 'humane' or
related to 'faith' may as well be the first of its kind in the history of
Arab culture, but for sure, it is certainly the first text that takes the
human activity out of its humanitarian context (Legitimacy, War
Ethics, the unseen dimension...) and draws comparison between man
and animal without having to consider the dignity that God accorded
man with all that is attached to this dignity.
As a matter In fact, Ibn Khaldun means barely just one thing
when he talks about civilization, which is 'luxury'. He argues that if
the glory instinct for glory of the King (i.e. the ruler) prevailed
prevails and luxury was is attained, the state becomes is consequently
on the verge of agin decay. It is clear that he takes luxury to mean two
kinds of corruption: the first is militarily, meaning the refraining of the
second generation of the citizens refraining from fighting, which was
the main interest of the first generation, who was were eager to
overcome the enemy and to defend the state; and the second is
economic,; meaning that leading a luxurious life results in spending
more than one's income would allows.
Besides, Luxury luxury corrupts man's morality as the self
becomes adapted to all sorts of evil, triviality, and all that
accompanies such newly acquired ethics... their 'good-oriented'
inclinations and tendencies would disappear, allowing for bad new
'evil-oriented' inclinations and tendencies to substitute for them... this
would represent grave signs bingers of the extinction and death of the
state, which starts to deteriorate, dwindle, and suffer from bad and
incurable ills..
Ibn Khaldun delineates the path for the social progress in
cycles which, he sees as it as natural, for states to go through. He
argues that 'overcoming' or becoming 'triumphant' is attained through
62
the help of Asabyiah, which is characterized by strength and vigor,
that usually come only from nomadism.
Thus, in his opinion, the state begins ,in his opinion, with
nomadism, where in which qualities likesuch as strength, vigor,
boldness, and stalwartness' exist. Then, when triumph is attained,
luxury and opulence follow suit. In what looks like his definition of
civilization, Ibn Khaldun says:
"Civilization is the art of running luxury and all the ways
associated with it from kitchens, clothes, buildings, furniture, to all
that household would require. All these are necessary for living and
are called for by the different tastes and wishes of peoples.... in this
manner, the cycle of 'triumphing' follows the cycle of 'nomadism' in a
successive way where the people of a certain state emulate (or try to
be like) their predecessors".
Taking the concept of civilization from its 'Western' context to
the Arabic culture raises, in our modern age, many questions, and has
become the subject of many linguistic, artistic and, cultural attempts to
explain and simplify, this complex concept. Some of the exegeses
arising from this obtained are limited in scope, and while others are
more comprehensive and thorough.
Thus, in the early writings in the Arab culture, regarding
civilization, as listed in the Eencyclopedia of the 20th century,
Mohamed Farid differentiates between Hadharah and Hedharah;
serving the first to be the opposite of nomadism, while he uses the
second to mean 'living in urban centers'.
And at the end of his attempt, Farid refers us to 'urbanity',
where he stating that: "Madaniyah (urbanity) is derived from the word
Madinah (which means city) of which they carved out the verb
'tamadan' (meaning to live in a city, to get out of nomadism, and to
pick up the ethics of city dwellers). Madaniyah (urbanity) has a
different and a larger meaning; as it denotes, in the jargon of
socialists,. "The classy or fashionable or refined state in which nations
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live under the conditions of artistic and high knowledge and
information suitable to their particular way of life. Thus, the word
gained a more comprehensive meaning than the linguistic one and
became an end (in itself) nations aspire tos at its peak as science,
knowledge and arts could allow".
When philosophers say, about the human being, 'he is civilized
by nature', they mean that he is equipped with the capability to seek
progressing, upgrading and refinement. This is of course right, for if
one contemplates the affairs of mankind, who has been sent from
'Alghaib' (the unseen and the unknown) and brought to this world
possessing only his body which he had to struggle with beasts and
animals in order to keep it intact and to stay alive, ... one is inclined to
see that Alfetrah (the innate power of understanding) that with which
Allah provided this human being with helped him to overcome all
obstacles that stood on in his way for thousands of years.
These obstacles enlightened his Fetrah, enthused him, and
strengthened his spirit in his struggle with his surroundings until he
emerged victorious; thereby moving from one state to a better one
than the earlier to the extent that he was never satisfied with any of
such states, for whenever, he reaches a certain state, he moves to the
one that follows it without seeing any impossibilities in his demarche.
Such a steady upgrading of man can and will take him to what
previous generations considered as perfection, or never even dreamed
of. The state of perfection, in this sense, does not concern only the
increase of in man's material wealth, but includes also his ethics and
morality; where his talents can get be sharpened and , refined, his
humanitarian tendencies can be uplifted until he appears in his best
form in terms of manners and morals.
And if it seems nowadays that some of the civilized are far
away from such a high state of perfection, the acquired morals would
will finally coerce them to the path of moderation and would take
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them to the sphere of goodness via their innate God-given power of
Fetrah.
Having introduced his definition, Farid follows the path this
human civilization took all along through the history of mankind with
a view to finding the 'cradle of civilization', since its birth, which
could have been in Egypt or in India, up to the turn and to the end of
the Twentieth 20th Century.
Near the end of the 20th century, Dr Hussein M'oness, in his
book entitled Alhadarah (Civilization) introduces a more simplified
and more accurate definition of civilization. He says: "Civilization –
in our general understanding – is the fruit of all efforts of mankind to
improve his living conditions whether these efforts are exerted with
the intention of getting that fruit or not... and whether that fruit was
materialistic or moral".
He also adds, "this concept of Alhadarah it attached strongly to
history and the definition, clear as it may seem, still can be criticized
as 'purely secular instrumentalist as it does not refer to any dimension
related to the Hereafter (in which the faithful believes) nor does it
contain, at all, any value-related dimension in the meaning of
civilization".
Dr Nassr A'ref weighs in, as he stating that the word Alhadarah
which is the translation, in of the Western parlance, of the term
civilization, which in turn came from different roots in the Latin
language such as Civilities, which is the equivalent of urbanity, or
Civvies (dwellers of the city), or Cities (which was used to describe
the naughty, arrogant, and barbaric citizens of the Roman Empire).
The derivative of Civilization was not arrived at until the 18th
century when De Mirabeau, in his book under the entitled, "An Article
on Civilization", presented the concept as, "tenderness in the nature of
a certain people, their widespread knowledge, and their construction...
which are put to the service of the general use of mankind".
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It seems to me that all definitions included a mixture blend of
moral and materialistic elements blends that have thus far been
partially achieved in the Western (i.e. European) society. As a matter
of fact, the word civilization as a derivative of the word Cities casts its
own shadows on the connotation of the concept (at hand). .
According to Lambarde, the city passed through three stages in
Europe:
Before the Industrial Revolution: The 'city' has appeared in
Europe since the Greeks, who knew it as a political unit standing by
itself with an independent government, and a political regime of its
own. With the introduction of Christianity into Europe, the city
revolved around the Cathedral or the Church, especially as the
services rendered by the city deteriorated due to its civil
administration. And with the beginning of wars between Muslims and
Christians, European cities began to take on a military/commercial
stature alongside with the religious one. Finally, the city and its role
had to shy diminished as Europe entered into the 'Ddark Aages'.
The Industrial Stage: As a consequence of the Industrial
Revolution, European cities began to enlarge as they attracted large
numbers of workers and those who were responsible for transporting
them from villages to the cities. Thus, the city was transferred to a
place where market economy and political authority were intertwined,
to the extent that world history became mixed with city history.
The Metropolitan Stage: in that stage, following the capitalist
expansion and the technical development, the city itself developed and
housed many big organizations and multi-national corporations,.... and
many distant cities began to interact while at the same time being
citizens were closely attached to the mother city or to the original city.
With the beginning of the 20th century and the colonial
expansion of Europeans in the Arab world, the word civilization found
its place in the Arabic language and in the dictionaries;, thereby
leading to a confusion in the use of terms and concepts due to the thin
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narrow differences between words like Thaqafah (culture), Madaniyah
(urbanity) and Hadharah (civilization)., especially with these three
words in the Arab language while when in the European language
there is only one word: civilization. This confusion led to two
orientations in translating the concept:
1- Civilization as "Urbanity": Though this is a very famous
and wide spread translation of the word civilization in the Arab
World, it echoes and corresponds well to the Arabic language. It was
first used when Al-Tahtawy, in his book "Ways Egyptian Brains Go",
used the term Tamadun (urbanization) to express the meaning of the
concept in European thinking and to show that that kind of Tamadun
exists in the Islamic culture.
This use of urbanity prevailed till until recently, .aAnd in
1957, he used the word 'culture' to describe all societal material
phenomena included in the word 'civilization' (as used in the West);
pointing to the fact that 'culture' comprises material and moral aspects
and is an independent term, and difficult to be copied, transferred and
inherited, in contrast to Hadharah.
Dr. 'Aref believes that researchers disagree on the original
syntactical root of the word "Madaniyah (urbanity) as dome some (of
them) sees it as comes from 'mudun' (cities), which means living or
residing in the place, while others see that it as coming from the root
of 'dana', from which means the origin of the word Deen (religion),
meaning submissive or f obeyed.
Whatever the origin of the word might maybe, this utterance
was connected to the appearance of the Islamic state and to the
religion of Islam itself with all the connotations of being submissive,
or obedient, and the politics the word might entail. The city was
connected at the time of the Prophet (peace be upon Him) to a societal
worldly new system in the Arab peninsula which was founded on the
Islamic values and the principles emanating from them.
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Unlike the Western experience, Al-Madinah (the city) in the
Islamic tradition was been established as a result of, rather than
causing, the existence of the values of educating and disciplining, and
the social and the political relations in the Islam and not a cause of it.
Besides, the city in the Islamic traditions began from what the
Western Experience ended up with (the Metropolitan, i.e. the city to
which other cities are attached). All Islamic cities were central
advanced quarters to which hundreds of cities, villages and hamlets
were attached all over the stretched Islamic Empire; like such as, for
example, the cities of Kufa, Kurtubah, and Asatanah, which were
centers in the Islamic Empire across throughout its history.
Moreover, If we were to take the contemporary European
cities as a sign for of human progress and development, – as the
Western thought might suggests, – then Ibn Khaldun considered that
same picture of welfare and opulence as merely a cycle in which
certain dysfunctions appear in the application of the systemic Islamic
Values and the rules that determines man's conduct in society and
man's approach to interacting with the Universe,...and are necessarily
contradicting the concept of man being the successor of God on Earth.
Living in cities, for Ibn Khaldun, represented a deviation from the
path of God and goodness, and the end of construction.
Another orientation takes civilization to mean Hadharah in
Arabic. This has been the prevalent orientation in Arabic writings
since the second quarter of the 20th century, and examining all these
definitions provided so far, we find that they are the same as those
given for Madaniyah (urbanity); they may differ in a sense, but the
content of the word is almost the same; i.e. the European content, as
the concept usually refers to or is attached to modern technical
advancements or to European sciences and knowledge; i.e. the essence
of current European developments.
They all start from considering civilization as encompassing
all manifestations of social phenomena of a materialistic, scientific
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and artistic nature in society which represents the more refined phase
of human development. Thus, looking at the concept in Arabic
writings in the domain of social sciences we find that they differ from
the connotations implied in the European thought which suggests the
universality of science, the methodology, the concepts, and
consequently civilization.
Regardless of my partial agreement with Dr. 'Aref in what he
said, I think that there is a 'universality' or a 'common ground' in the
space referred to; a universality emanating from two sources:
First: The Qur'an relates to us that the paths of those before us
is something that Allah guides us to, the Almighty Allah says: "Allah
desires to make clear to you, and guide you to, the paths of those
before you, and to turn to you in mercy. And Allah is All- Knowing,
Wise".
This kind of guidance, however, is not a source through which
we learn the religiously 'unseen' or a ruling of Shaar'iah law ... ,; it is,
rather, a source through which we know the rules that govern all types
of human assembly, hence the enlargement of the concept to the
universal rules as governing laws for the rise and fall of civilizations
without any distinction between nations or favoring one nation over
the other, for these are constant and steady rules which make no
exceptions, even for the Messengers or the prophets of God.
Second: the concept of human Fetrah (innate nature of
mankind) is considered one of the great origins of Islam; for as the
Qur'an addresses the 'believers', it also addresses all mankind using
two different forms of speech that complement one another. Part of
this common ground, we find in:
1 - The Unity of Human origin:
Allah says: "O ye people! fear your Lord, Who created you
from a single soul", also,; the unity of substance of which Allah
created all mankind, He (exalted be His name) says: "He it is Who
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created you from clay...";; the unity of the biological laws that govern
all mankind, He (exalted be His name) says: "It is Allah Who created
you in a state of weakness, and after weakness gave strength; then,
after strength, caused weakness and old age..…";; and this unity
become complete with the unity of the laws governing the movement
of the entire Universe, He (exalted be His name) says: "He created
you from a single being; then from that He made its mate; and He has
sent down for you eight HEAD of cattle in pairs. He creates you in the
wombs of your mothers, creation after creation, in three fold darkness.
This is Allah, your Lord. His is the kingdom. There is no God but He.
Whither then are you being turned away?"
2 - The Will of God:
God decreed that nations be different so as to test and try them.
It is through such tests and trials that man's faith can be evaluated in
the sight of Allah. He says: "Your Lord, Who created you from a
single soul".
According to this universal rule, the difference (between
nations) becomes a space for using the free will (of man) to do good
deeds on from one's own choices.
3 - The Principle of Equality:
The fact that the 'multiplication' of the human race is mentioned after
'its unity', refers to one of the greatest principles, that of equality in
humanity: for since we all are sons and daughters of Adam and Eve,
we all formed (in the past) one nation which (later) became divided
(into many nations). Allah says: "Mankind were one community, then
they differed among themselves, so Allah raised Prophets as bearers
of good tidings and as warners, and sent down with them the Book
containing the truth.....".( ).
4 - Confirmation of Fetrah:
Allah has confirmed the unity of man's origin with reference to
the substance of from which it he was created and to the process of his
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creation, and to man's Fetrah in many places of the Holy Qur'an. He
says: "And, surely, We created man from dry ringing clay, from black
mud wrought into shape".
5 - Unity of the Human Soul:
On talking about man's Fetrah, the Holy Qur'an did not differentiate in
regard to the common features between nations or between believer
and non-believer. Allah says: "Verily, man is born impatient and
miserly...".( )
6 - Man's Guidance is God's Purpose:
On informing the believers of such universal laws and rules
(concerning differences and multiplicities), Allah was not merely
providing information to enlarge their knowledge. He was, rather,
guiding them, believers and non-believers alike, since His book (the
Qur'an) is a book of Guidance as non-believers have always been the
object of 'possible guidance' by the Qur'an unless they choose to stay
in the enemies' camp. Hence, the myriad of calls in the Qur'an:
"O ye who believe".. 89 times;
"O mankind"... 20 times;
"O ye People of the Book".... 12 times.....
Dr. 'Aref adds: "in reality, the concept of civilization in the
Arabic thought and language seems to be congruent with the European
root of the word '"civilization'", especially as used by Ibn Khaldun as
he talked about it as a derivative of residing in urban quarters which is
contrary to and different from residing in villages where the nomads
do. Most of the confusion comes to researchers as they consult Arabic
dictionaries while they are loaded with previous or preconceived
biases such as restricting the use of civilization to mean only those
who reside in urban cities and anywhere else. The meaning of
Hadharah (civilization) is mentioned to indicate attending at or
witnessing (something). In that sense, the Arabic verb Hadhara means
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witnessed or attended, which is the opposite of being away from the
scene. The Qur'an says: "when death comes to any one of you... ".
Shahadah (Attending or witnessing) has four integrated
meanings which (together) form part of the reification of the concept
of Hadharah (civilization):
1 – Monotheism: which means professing to believe in the
existence of only one God in the world. This is the mainstay in Islam
which determines whether a person is within the confines of religion
or out of it;
2 – As saying the truth and taking the right path, which is
considered one of the approaches to learning knowledge and science;
3 – As a sacrifice: on the way of Allah for protecting the faith;
and
4 – A Function of this Ummah (nation of Islam) as shown in
this Verse of the Qur'an: "And thus have We made you an exalted
nation, that you may be guardians over men, and the Messenger of
God may be a guardian over you...".
In this sense, Shahadah belongs to this life and to the
Hereafter; as the Ummah (nation) be strong, founded on Justice and
administering it, inviting (others) to the path of Allah the only God the
Creator of the Universe. Thus, Al-Hadharah in its original Islamic
sense leads to an Islamic model believing in Monotheism which does
not ascribe any other Gods with than Allah the sole with creating of
the universe.
Man's mission on earth, then, becomes a struggle over how to
effect Al- Khelafa (the Succession) of Allah on Earth by making the
earth worth living on, and making it as palatable and peaceful for
others as he can, i.e. Al-Hadharah comprises the demarche towards
happiness in this world and in the Hereafter.
Dr. 'Aref concludes from applying the conditions of AlHadharah on to a certain human experience, by saying that,: in reality,
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one can apply the term Hadharah on to any human experience as long
as the following conditions exist:
1 – The existence of a belief system to delineate the nature of
the relationship between the world and the 'unseen' and the existence
or non-existence of God;
2 –The existence of an affective, behavioral (psychomotor)
and thoughtful (cognitive) construct of the general values, traditions
and customs and morals that exist in society;
3 –The existence of some materialistic type that comprises all
material dimensions in life;
4 – Clearly determining the relationship to the Universe (and
all that exist within it); and
5 – Clearly determining the relationship with the 'other' (i.e.
the other human societies) and the ways to convince them of this
model and the its purpose thereof.
In essence, the concept of Hadharah (civilization or urbanity)
has in the Islamic thought been focused on the value of the Islamic
creed which represented the path and the method to Islamic practices
and, as such, it is distinctive from the Western (European) model
which relied on its experience and ways of living to shape the concept.
The best way to conclude this part is to offer my own new
definition of Hadharah (civilization) which in my view is more
accurate than the existing definitions: "The term Hadharah can be used
to describe any integrated conceptualization that claims the ability to
arrange the relationship between the values of: right, order and liberty
in a special way".
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Chapter 2
Construction of Islamic Civilization
(In the light of William "Will" Durant's
view of Civilization)
The argument vision of Will Durant, the most famous Western
writer on the concept of civilization, in his book "Tthe Story of
Civilization", is considered one of the most important visions
arguments about concerning the beginning, the development and the
end of civilization.
Before we review what his writings, we must take note that Fr.
Zaki N. Mahmoud, who translated the book from English to Arabic,
had noticed that Durant used Madaniyah (urbanity) and Hadharah
(civilization) to mean the same thing.
Meaning of Civilization: To For Durant, civilization is "A
social system that helps man increase his cultural production". It is
composed of four elements: economic resources; political systems;
moral traditions; and keeping up with scientific advancements.
Security & Civilization: Durant states that no civilization can
exist in the absence of security, and that "civilization begins the
moment commotions and worries stop"; for man seeks security first,
and if that security is ascertained, he can feel free to set get on with (or
look forward to) constructing construction and creativity as he
becomes naturally motivated to continue in his way to understanding
the flourishing life.
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What Durant discovered in the Twentieth 20thCcentury, was
mentioned in the Qur'an in the Seventh 17thCenturycentury. In this
today‘s world, where there is a lack of security everywhere, to the
extent that Hadharah itself has became seriously threatened, we can
appreciate the call of Heaven, as Allah (blessed be His name) says:
"They should worship the Lord of this House ....Who has fed
them against hunger, and has given them security against fear".
This blessing of Allah, represented in His bestowment (on the
believers) of Security from Hunger and Fear paved the way for the
erection of the most progressive and most sophisticated civilization on
earth.
Civilization and geography: For civilization to take off, Durant
believes that certain factors must be forthcoming and conducive to its
flourishing. In terms of : geography, he argues that hot and tropical
areas are not suitable for the establishment of 'urbanity', for what is
known about these areas' early ripening and early harvesting of crops
dissuades people from looking for luxuries, an activity which is the
essence of tial to life in the cities and urban centers.
Besides, what the dwellers of in these areas earn is usually and
barely consumed in barely meeting meets their basic needs, such as
fighting hunger and satisfying reproduction reproductive purposes.
Nothing of man's efforts and energy is left for spending on arts and
thinking.
Durant stresses the importance of geographical location. Thus,
if a nation is located or situated on the main crossroads of trade, in
that case, though geography per se does not create a civilization, it can
for sure smile in its face and pave the way for its burgeoning and
prosperity.
And in Mecca, this condition is a case in point, there and the
Qur'an referred to it by saying: "Because of the attachment of the
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Quraish.... His making them attached to THEIR journey in winter and
summer".
This fact has been confirmed by the famous Iraqi writer Dr.
Abdul Jawad in his major work 'Al-Mufassal (the The
Comprehensive) on the history of Arabs before Islam', as he says:
"Mecca was able to survive and its people to thrive thanks to its
geographical location... for it is a joint junction where caravans and
tribes coming from or going to Al-Sham (Syria) could meet and find
some rest in and carry obtain some provisions from that. Then, the
Meccans were able to emulate these tribes and learn from them the
secret of travelling... they traveled in tribes to trade with the peoples
of Yemen and Syria ... and in the Sixth Century (following the birth of
Jesus), the people of Mecca monopolized trade in the entire Arab
peninsula and dominated all the roads that connect Yemen to Iraq and
Syria".
Economic Factors and Civilization
Adding these (economic) factors, Durant believes that they
economic factors are more important than geography in the erection of
a civilization by a certain people, for they may have tidy and
uncluttered social institutions and a highest supreme moral legislation
(law), and may have some kinds of arts, such as in the case of Indian
Americans...., but if they still live on hunting whatever they may find
out there to live on,... it would be impossible for such a people to
transform perfectly and outright absolutely from barbarianism to
urbanity or civility. A Bedouin tribe, as - like in Arabia, - may be in a
rare state of strength and intelligence, may cast sublime and
magnificent morals such as generosity and magnanimity,.. yet its
intelligence (without the minimum asset of culture which is necessary
and without finding the necessary means of living) could be spent on
meetings the risks of hunting and requirements for trade ;, thereby
leaving nothing for the construction of civilization and all its
trappings, trimmings and accompaniments.
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Culture appeared first in the form of Agriculture, as man did
not find it suitable to stay in any place unless that place was cultivable
with the prospect of being able to store the necessary food for the
following day(s).
With that minimum subsistence assured (i.e. a sure source of
water and food), man starts to build house, schools, and temples, and
tries to invent the tools necessary for his production, and he begins to
domesticate, dogs, donkeys, and hogs, and finally to engage himself in
regularly steady work to stay alive longer and become more able to
honestly transfer humanity's heritage of science and morality (to the
next generations).
A discussion of preliminary results
Abundance and stability are then the two wings of for the
establishment of civilization as seen by Durant, who does not
represent an exception of the mainstream line of Western thinking, in
where the role of Al- Wahi (Heavenly Revelation) (revelation) as
God's instructions for mankind are excluded. Al-Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation) is indeed the first seed for establishing any Hadharah
(civilization) on earth: this is present and clearly written in the Qur'an
in the story of Adam's creation. Allah says:
"And He taught Adam all the names, then He put the objects of
these names before the angels and said: ‗Tell Me the names of these, if
you are right. They said: ‗Holy art Thou! No knowledge have we
except what Thou hast taught us; surely, Thou art the All-Knowing,
the Wise. ‘He said: ‗O Adam, tell them their names;‘ and when he had
told them their names, He said: ‗Did I not say to you, I know the
secrets of the heavens and of the earth, and I know what you reveal
and what you conceal?‘
In one of the Qur'anic verses, Allah reiterates the fact that He
taught man how to write, He says: "Allah has taught him, so let him
write....".
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In the same verse there is a proof that the connection between
Heavens and Earrath is not limited only to the 'unseen' and to the
revelation of revealing laws or moral rules for conduct, but it extends
also to include educating (man).
Allah, exalted be His name, did not only taught man, but also
made all things on earth at his disposal, and paved the way for his
discoveries. He says: "Convey! And thy Lord is Most Generous,...
Who taught MAN by the pen,... Taught man what he knew not".
Perhaps this was the first time in which knowledge was
mentioned to mean the sense of moving from the known to the
unknown.
The concept is enlarged as to include meanings that are not
easily fathomable so as to indicate the superiority of a certain
language and the modesty of another. Allah says: "He has taught him
plain speech"..
At another level, the concept of education gets engorged, so as
to include the technical dimension of educating,. Thus, Allah says
about His Prophet David, "And We taught him the making of coats of
mail for you, that they might protect you from each other‘s violence.
Will you then be thankful?"
Of this opinion are some of the early thinkers are also of this
opinion, such aslike Ibn Hazm, who, in his book "Marateb El 'ulum"
(the degrees of science), says that God, whose name be exalted,
revealed to mankind all professions, therefore , He taught the first
carpenter,... and the first in each of the rest of the professions.
Among contemporary thinkers, there are those who agree with
this, considering that names are concepts and criteria for classification
sand not industries. As Allah, exalted be His name, taught Adam all
the names (of things), He also taught Abraham, and the rest of the
prophets after him, the basic concepts so that they might pass them on
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to the peoples, such as like: prophet hood, Message, Monotheism,
Shirk, Good deed, ....etc.
He also taught Moses, Jesus and Mohamed (peace be upon
them all) many other concepts until the basic and necessary concepts
were taught to Mohamed the seal of the prophets.
Urbanity and civilization
Since Durant saw the establishment of civilization as a
developmental process that came out of the earth, not as a process
comprising what has had been revealed from Heavens, it was natural
for him to tie civilization up to agriculture. He also saw that culture is
connected to agriculture, and that Madaniyah is connected to Madinah
or, to put it in his terms, urbanity is connected to the city.
….Therefore, he considered urbanity as tenderness of treatment,
which he saw as characteristic of the inhabitants of the city who
fashioned the wisdom in the city where the best products of the
villages (brains and wealth), could be found.
Inventions in the city lead continually to comfort and leisure,
and merchants do meet in the city, where they exchange ideas and
articles and, thus, brains mix and ideas beget ideas, and creation and
creativity begin soaring high. In the city also, some people are spared
for the production of philosophies, science, arts and literature. Indeed,
urbanity begins in the cottages and huts of the small farmers, but it
does only flourishes in the cities.
The connection between the city and the establishment of
civilization, as laid out by Will Durant, reveals yet one another aspects
of Islamic civilizational awareness, for, in Islam, there are inherent
universal laws.
If such universal laws were not adopted by human formations,
they can still find their way to it as part of the process of social
transformation. It is for this reason that Islam leaned early towards
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choosing the 'city' and preferring it to any other forms of human
grouping, be of nomadism or rural gatherings.
Despite the fact that many historians consider the appearance
of the nation-state, which was accepted as a form for political
organization following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as the
beginning of a major transformation into Madaniyah (urbanity), we
find that Islam preceded it in adopting this choice. And if we take
'ruralization' as a model for the social organization that preceded
living in cities, we find that it represented more than merely a social
form, to being, in essence, a whole system of values, concepts and
psychological inclinations.
Politically speaking, ruralization is considered a
discontinuance of the efforts geared towards the establishment of "the
State of Institutions" which goes hand in hand with living in the city
instead of opposed to the prevalence of close family or tribal relations
that exist in the villages, in which case, ruralization would mean the
domination of rural values over the political institutions.
The concept of 'institution' is a twin of other concepts and
carries with it a specific logic, a special philosophy of its own, and
certain special traits such as: objectivity; multiplicity, neutralizing
feelings; and freedom of information circulation.
In a society where man's value as an independent being was
recognized, institutions appeared as an expression of the individual's
respect and esteem. In most of Western societies, the concept of
'individualism' is not stable as of yet. It could be that this is due to the
fact that the concept of 'city' as an expression of a social development
and as new relationships differ from the relationships of the village or
the tribe.
Rural areas or the countryside does not recognize the
individual as an independent being but always as part (of a larger
group), and certain traits prevail in the countryside, such as: close
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family relations or kin relations; group affiliations, and the absence or
lack of individual privacy, ...etc.
Ruralization, taken as a social and cultural case, poses several
questions, chief of which come concerns the issue of hierarchy among
the human gathering and the position of Islam towards it.
The Jordanian researcher Abraham Gharabiyah believes that
societies and civilizations veer, in their general demarche, towards
urbanization (Tamadun), as cities have always been centers for
cultures, governing and Heavenly calls. In the cities, people gather in
the place around a social contract, which is the first and the most
important step in the requirements of (Tahadhur) or becoming
civilizeding.
Cities are the center for public, social civilizational and
creative work which necessitates having man belonging to a city or to
a civilization gathering of a civilization, since shepherds and hunters
cannot erect social and cultural projects.
The gathering idea of gathering for people around a certain
place is the basis for nations and, civilizations and public work,
because it enables the erection of projects, establishes interests, and
enacts laws and forges cultures with a view to organizing the political,
administrative and cultural life according to the interaction of people
with that place and with one another of course. People's contracts for
having established to ensure justice, security and the common good, is
are what really determines their interaction with the place, (i.e. with
the city), not the requirements of environmental imperatives of
production and protection known in villages or rural areas.
Gharabiyah goes even further, to believing that establishing an
Islamic community was at the heart of the Islamic call. Thus, the city
of Yathreb was called Al-Madinah (the city) as an important symbolic
indication that Islam thrives basically in the context of a city, and that
the message of Islam must be raised in a city as it does is not suited to
starting in small villages, hamlets, or in limited rural or tribal
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communities. The prophet (peace be upon Him) used to advise the
newly converted (to Islam) not to go back to their Bedouin origin in
order to that they should stay in the city and build a city community.
And if we examine the teachings and manners of Islamic we find that
they command a more civilized code of conduct and behavior, that
includes the place of gathering, such as: Asking for permission to
enter someone else's house or premises; Speaking at a low voice;
Cleanliness, Beautification, and Perfume and, Hygiene, Listening and
Hearkening, Writing down one's Indebtedness, ..etc., which in turn
create traditions and customs that raise and breed civilization.
Thus, tamadun is not a luxurious or a philosophical matter, it
is, rather, a necessity that dictated by the fact that erecting cities
dictate is essential to enable cities, universities, parliaments,
companies and factories, all of the features of without having with
these a civil culture, to be to administered, guided and organized in
theirs efforts. If nomadic or rural culture is formed by small groups
following a certain type of production and protection, no one can
imagine how this kind of culture would be able to organize such a
larger, bigger, and complex communities as those of the cities, which
are not tied together have the ties of the same ties of kinship,
marriages, and living and working together which exist in villages and
small groups.
Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon Him) strongly warned
against returning back to the state of Bedouins, saying as He said:
"Beware of the Seven Great Evils..…",and when the people did not
utter a word, He said: ""aren't you doing going to ask me about them?
They are: Atheism (Shirk), Murder, Running away from the
Battlefield, Eating up the orphan's money, taking (eating up) Usury,
calumniating chaste women, and Arabization (going back to PreIslamic culture) after Hijrah".
Order and Civilization
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The preceding biological and material factors are only
conditions for erecting an urbanity (or civilization), but these factors
cannot in themselves establish it out of the blue; for there must be
something else to be added to these conditions: the minute
psychological factors, i.e. there must be an order represented by a
Political System, even if that system is weak and verging of disorder.
The exceptionally importance of the value of 'Order', to which
Durant refers, corresponds to my own understanding of the value of
order in society. Order as a matter of fact is necessary for any
civilization; albeit we take it to mean more than the political system.
Linguistic and & Cultural Unity and Civilization:
"There must also be a linguistic unity in any community in
order for the people to exchange their ideas. There must also be a
moral law to tie the people up to the standing institutions in society
such as churches, family, school, ..etc., so as not to allow for the
existence of rules not acknowledged or recognized by anybody in
society. This can would people in one code of behavior thereby
delineating their goals and incentives. Agreement of people on the
same creed and beliefs can help tremendously as this elevates morality
and ethics in society to the extent one does has to compare between
gains and cost, but to concentrate instead on sincerity in what one
does. This makes our life more honorable and richer in spite of its
short duration before death snaps it (from us). Finally, there must be
education (upbringing) in society; no matter how primitive and
elementary this education might be, in order to carry culture to the
next generations. The youth must inherit what the fathers have; the
heritage of the tribe, its spirit, its morals and ethics, its traditions, its
sciences and knowledge..., etc., regardless of who the teacher might
be: the father, the mother, the priest, and regardless of the method of
upbringing itself; dictation, training, or emulation... this heritage
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would be the tool with which the youth can be transformed from the
state of animals and beasts to the refined state of man".
Collapse of Civilization:
If the preceding factors, or one of them, do not exist,
civilization may collapse. Of the factors that lead to the sullying of
civilization include: A great biological turning, a severe climate
change, an outbreak of a pest or an epidemic of infectious or
contagious disease that is damaging to livestock, crops and humans,
and or loss of land fertility; ruining agriculture due to the encroach
menting of urban centers on rural areas; and a drastic change in the
direction and roads of trade and transportation; and/or a moral
dissolution or mental incapacitation of people.
This very last factor arises usually from living in urban centers
where the delicacy of life becomes decadent and exciting.
Also among the factors of civilizational decay and crumbling
are:
The destruction of the social order of norms and rules that
govern society, coupled with the inability to replace such norms and
rules; infertility of men due to incurable diseases or to nasty
philosophical pessimistic orientations which prompts man to despise
and forsake marriage; the lack of strong leadership that works towards
passing the heritage to the next generations; concentration of wealth
into the hands of a few, and the existence of a severe class struggles in
society that lead to wars, revolutions and bankruptcies.
Some of these tools could lead to the destruction of Madaniyah
or urbanity since the latter is not something innate in the human being,
nor is it something that is impervious to ruining and annihilation or
obliteration. It is, rather, an earned or acquired thing from past
generations through hard work. Should a major setback happens in the
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way these elements are transferred from one generation to the other,
this could lead to its total eradication.
Man is different from animals in the sense that he is educated:
and education is the method through which urbanity is transferred
from one generation to the other.
Different urbanities are as dear and valuable to the human soul
as the next generations; for as consecutive generations get are
connected through the existence of families that educates its their
children,; and the tool of writing which helps carry the heritage of the
fathers to their sons, issues like such as trade, printing, and other tools
are also important as well in connecting peoples and urbanities;
thereby protecting the upcoming cultures with its all its valuable
components related to our madaniyah: let's, therefore, collect our
heritage and pass it on to our children before death subdues us.
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Section Three 3
Islamic Approach in to Building
Civilization
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Chapter One1
On the Condition of Certainty
Every civilizational vision includes or must include – in one
way or another – a specific concept about the origin of the man, the
universe, and the issue of the existence or non-existence of God, and
the relationship between these issues. And, based on this concept,
every vision formulates its stand position regarding the issue of God,
or and this latter issue decided the stand towards regarding the
universe.
For between believing in a God and following His Heavenly
revelations on the one hand, or denying the existence of such a God on
the other, comes a visualization of a Deity or a God who created the
universe and put in it the necessary laws necessary that keep it
functioning.
From this introduction, there will be no need for God's
interference in the path of history by any Heavenly revelations; a
polite way through which atheism creeps into the picture. The
relationship among these three values (right, liberty, and order) is, in
fact, the focus of man's movement on earth.
Heavenly religions as well as ideologies (human thought with
panoramic visions) formulate visions which attempt to, somehow,
organize this relationship. It is not surprising, therefore, to see that
'ideologies' take the structure of religions; If we take Marxism as an
example, we find that:
•
universe;
it considers the working class as to be the center of the
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•
it presents a comprehensive explanation of the
phenomenon of man's existence on earth;
•
It has its 'holy books' (the communist Communist
manifesto Manifesto and the Ccapital;
•
•
production);
It has its own prophets (Marx and many others);
It has its own taboos (the ownership of the tools of
•
It has Hellfire and Paradise of its own (capitalism
versus scientific socialism).
Since organizing the relationship among these three governing
values is necessarily based on giving specific definitions to them,
man's history is nothing but a dialogue between two paths to attaining
knowledge, each of which has its own symbol.
In an early stage of the history of humanity this dialogue was
between the 'prophet' and the 'priest', and nowadays, it is intended to
be between the 'prophet' and the 'scientist' or the 'philosopher'.
Religion – (any religion: Heavenly or earthbound) –presents
itself as provides certain convictional or legislative axioms and
platitudes which aiming to organize the life of mankind on earth. A
non-believing thinker sees that these axioms and platitudes with which
any individual starts to formulate his vision of himself and the world
around him and the universe, must be entirely human (not God-given).
The Problem of Right: The word 'right' has several meanings:
1 – 'Right' is one of the names of God as well as an adjective
describing His Almighty as the absolute whose Oneness and Deity is
proven;
2 – 'Right' means the opposite of 'falsehood';
3- 'Right' also refers to the 'fixed duty'
4 – 'Right' also means 'true'.
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In the philosophical lexicon, Right, to the idealists, is a selfdescription according to which a ruler could be permanently right or
wrong permanently based on his verbal statements. To the naturalists,
Right is a description added by man's mind to his verbal statements
according to the given circumstances,; thus, the logical positivists
considered right to be affective, like other values meaning approbation
of a certain speech which could be right or wrong.
Thus, preconceived ideas alter the meaning of concepts and
take us back to an earlier problem, which is certainty.
In order to have a specific meaning for these three governing
values to have a specific meaning in the formulating the concept of
civilization, the issue of certainty must be defined, for 'civilization is
the daughter of certainty'. One of the most important rules that Islam
laid down in this regard is that 'with right, we can recognize men, not
with men that we recognize right'.
But this rule, which denies that 'men' are a way through which
we recognize 'right' and proves states the opposite, merely 'denies and
proves' states', without delineating a specific path through which we
can know what right is.
Nor does this rule offer its own definition of right. The path to
right could be: accepting 'revelation'; using one's 'mind'; following
'intuition'; or through experience.
This last path to right is merely perceiving the partial facts, and
is not a path to knowing what right is. Right is an abstract to which
concrete evidence purports. The rule reflects Islamic concern for
dismantling the structure of Shirk in religion and in science so as not
to let people be considered the road to perceiving right, even though
some of the people may lead to it.
As for Naql, or receiving from other sources, it could as well
be either from our predecessors or from an 'unseen' source,; a source
that is beyond our world. If that Naql is from our predecessors, it
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could as also imply the existence of Shirk, since it would merely be
copying from them. And if these predecessors are merely a medium
for learning and not a source for receiving knowledge, they would be
equal to other sources (from which we get our knowledge).
But if Naql is taken from the 'unseen' sources which Heavenly
religions call Al-Wahi (Heavenly Revelation), it is then taken from a
source that the human mind can perceive but cannot contain; ,
understand but cannot be able to produce.
And for perceiving right among all pretentions offered by
thinkers, we do have tools with which we can distinguish wheat from
chaff. The first of these tools is our inherent or explicit intelligent
guessing or intuition. Our scrutiny could be based on reasoning and
analogy, but this could merely be a rationale emanating from what the
'self' and the 'intuition' of researchers, even though inadvertently and
unintentionally.
The Problem of Axioms:
As far as intuition is necessary for (attaining)in order to attain
certainty, one has to assume and postulate knowing knowledge of
what certainty is. For if each generation of people is to take it upon
itself to rethink and reconsider the axioms and platitudes (inherited
from past generations), we end up by having atheist successive
generations who see only susper stictions and don‘t believe in right as
an abstract concept.
Knowing that Man's lifespan on earth does not exceed one
century at its best, one fifth of which is spent before reaching mental
maturity and the ability to conduct research, do (the necessary)
deductions and make (valid) generalizations... (all of which are part
and parcel of our demarche towards fashioning the concept of
certainty away from the path of Al-Wahi (Heavenly Revelation) or
that of receiving from our predecessors).
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Besides, approximately one quarter of man's life span (25 – 30
years) is spent in sleep. Each and every exception here confirms and
does not negate the general rule.
And even if we assume that man can spend what is left of his
age time (50 – 55 years) in abstract mental research, searching for
certainty, without being distracted by any other sidetrack dealings
thing else (such as looking for food, work, rest, or suffering from
sickness....), he will still be unable to attain or comprehend what right
is (or might be).
This is because the size tremendous extent of the incremental
knowledge accumulated thus far in the conscience and records of
humanity ,big as it is, would makes such a purpose unattainable. Some
thinkers do make the mistake of believing when thinking that they
could can invent, not discover, the axioms and platitudes which are
part of a universal system encompassing man and contained by him.
Ways leading to the attainment of certainty are hierarchical,
even though they look similar or parallel. And since perceiving
certainty is a complex issue, understanding or explaining it fully is,
until now at least, impervious to the ability of man's mental capacity.
For a human mind to comprehend certainty, it has first to
perceive that it is a human mind; second, that it does under takes (a
process of) minding thinking; third, it must comprehend the process of
reasoning and all that is necessary for it (introductions, results,
essence, the accidental, the abstract, the general law, the constant and
the changeable): and finally, it must be aware of the pitfalls of
reasoning, with a view to being able to know distinguish the truthful
or the real from among what it thinks it encompasses or realizes. Then
it must be aware that there is something called certainty.
We might be dissuaded to not from thinking along these lines
just because we received knowledge from our predecessors, whose
knowledge also came from their forefathers, who were likewise
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following in the footsteps of their ancestors, ....etc., until we reach the
first one in the chain of reasoning.
But this first act of reasoning being is still based on a
hypothesis (which cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt), and
basing certainty on a hypothesis is unscientific. To argue that mindful
reasoning occurred as a an historical biological developmental chains
that started with the Ameba and ended up with the maturity of the
human being, is something that belies many platitudes and does sound
more plausible that believing in the existence of a Creator God. Both
arguments belong to the unseen anyway.
This means that the unseen is overwhelming the human mind
from the beginning. Taking for granted postulates and platitudes that
believing in them cannot be subject to reasoning is, according to the
British philosopher Bertrand Russell, something unavoidable. He
says: "It is not possible for us to move one single step forward if we
begin by the skeptic model of Descartes ... we have to begin by
broadly acquiescing to whatever looks like knowledge no matter
whatsoever".
These platitudes and postulated exist in al culture and
civilizations; be they based on a belief in the existence of a powerful
force that created the world and gave it its meaning; or be it based on
the belief that such a force created the world and left it after giving it
the laws that govern its movements; or still be it based on denying the
existence of such a force and thereby rejecting the idea of creation
altogether. Such postulates and platitudes may be there... but they
need a human effort to unravel them.
Civilization and Methodology:
The human mind, in realizing all that exists, follows a
methodology as path to certainty. Research methods have been
developed and became known and available to all culture and
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civilizations. The choice and scope of which method to be used or
followed, is something to be determined by the cultural and value
system prevailing in society as it precedes the choice of the
methodology itself.
Of course, there are reciprocal effects between a certain
method of research and the researcher using it. These effects cannot be
observed without looking into the cases and issues involved and only
through relying on or following a different methodology.
On the road to certainty, the human mind attempts to absorb,
and understand the solid arguments passed to it from revelations or
from predecessors; to interpret whichever of it accepts interpretation,
and to exert an effort in appreciating the unreasonable with the help of
facts, platitudes and axioms which are beyond dispute.
However, Intuition is fraught with slippery grounds and is
sometimes impervious to sound understanding. It dawns on the thinker
and makes him or her jump to the conclusion the moment he or she
advances a prelude.
As such, it does not follow the known steps of reasoning and it
helps the human thinker to appreciate and taste any transformed
information. It is also a road to judging between or balancing
equivalent pieces of evidence.
Certainty cannot be built only on intuition, nor can it promote
whatever interests a group of people may have, nor does it lead to
creating partial new truths not supported by revelation, reasoning, or
experiment.
Intuition means that the human mind is not a white sheet.
Moving from a certain prelude to a conclusion is a form of a simple or
a complex analogy, and moving from individual cases to the general
law in any induction requires that the mind knows the meaning of the
prelude, the consequence, the necessary, the core, the changeable, the
abstract, the fixed, and the general law.
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Here we become face to face with the role unless we accept all
ideas and arguments that precede certainty... in which case alWahi
(Heavenly Revelation) restores its place as a hegemonic over mind.
What causes people to go astray away from the path of truth is
putting truth within the confines of contradicting limits created mainly
be the human mind, or by custom and making such limits a standard
with which they judge truth.
Truth should come first and from it one can deduct the logic of
thinking. It should precede all methods and qualify the use of such
methods. The first duty one can learn from truth is to follow it. God is
one because He is one; not because logic necessitates or dictates this.
When logic supports this argument, it does not create truth ... it
merely offers proof of its existence. If a believer realizes this through
Intuition and if he gets support from his own mind and from concrete
and partial realities, then he has to accept from that source whatever
that source reveals to him as truths about the universe, about mankind,
and about the unseen and the seen worlds and he has to follow that
sources' commandments and precepts to letter.
If a man stipulates that he would follow only what he could
perceive, he in that case make himself equal to the source of truth. If
he takes it upon himself to leave parts of truth which do not echo well
with his mind, then he makes himself a criterion for truth. in which
case, the mind itself becomes both a source and a criterion of truth at
the same time.
If the human mind was capable of this, it would have been able
to produce the truth in the first place. To pretend that the human mind
can produce truth means the existence of a superhuman being which
does not exist since people are generally different in terms of minds
and capabilities.
This would necessarily lead to the emergence of an individual,
or a group of individuals, who would retain for themselves the ability
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to produce the truth; thereby taking us back, once again, to the idea of
the priesthood or clergy where the priests were considered the only
people who are endowed with the privilege to produce the truth (a
back door to Shirk closed forever by Islam which made the
relationship between God and man a direct one – without
intermediaries – and made the idea of salvation possible through, or
depending on, laws known to every believer, and provided men with
the intellectual abilities that enables believers to reach salvation in a
direct relationship with God without having to rely on any
intermediary for blessing and with no discrimination between
believers on the basis of sex or race.
Moreover, pretending that human beings can a priori produce
the truth, would necessarily means that the world is created out of
nothing which something the human mid denies and rejects.
Reality of Perception:
And due to the fact that perception is a complex case of
psychological and mental dimensions, man usually reverts to certain
ruses or tricks via which he avoids having to confront the determinism
and the oneness of certainty; thereby attempting to create a distance
between the revelation and its interpretation ... then the ruse goes on
until the offshoot becomes a branch of knowledge and at a later time
to the offshoot replaces the branch. In such a case, interpretation
becomes an objective in itself (per se), and the revelation becomes
merely a mould, or a construct, in which the human mind pours its
convictions.
Here it becomes imperative for the scholar to distinguish
between the constant and the changeable or to use Islamic terminology
is to distinguish between the 'fundamental' and the 'allegorical' where
the fundamental serves a shield the holy text against being corrupted
by any wrong interpretation.
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In the light of this distinction, Muslim scholars were able to
erect a solid structure called 'Maqased Al-Shar'ah (the purposes of
Shar'ah), which is a unique and non-incomparable form of creative
interactions between Religion and Shar'iah.
Whoever contemplates the overturning transformation in
Christianity caused by the appearance of Protestantism, and the
earthquake that followed (it) when the mystical views mysticism of
(Kabbalah) whereas allowed to dominate Judaism, which went so far
as to assert a central and salient role for the 'interpreter' (of the holy
text,' even above the text itself, which is reduced to a marginal
position state.), ...would will certainly realize the extent to which
Islam was able erect a siege barricade for the protection of religion
from any interpolation and/or domestication while, at the same time,
creatively interacting with the changeable reality.
Individual, Society and Consciousness:
As the human mind receives and interacts with what it
perceives, this consciousness establishes a tripartite relationship
between the individual, society and culture. This consciousness,
according to Dr. Abdullah El-Freeji, is one of the basic features which
the human being, aside from anything else, opts to rely on as he goes
ahead with his life.
This consciousness starts to be effective, from the moment a
link is established between the individual and the world; thereby
allowing for incrementing the increment of the knowledge and
perceptions that reflects his interaction with the world, or for copying
a more or less well-concerted and coherent type of thought and action.
For the group, this is called 'culture'.
This consciousness, Al-Freeji goes on, gets is affected by the
means of its formation,; the means by which the individual uses to
comprehends the outside world; therefore, this consciousness plays a
double function or role: on the one side, it is a process of knowing and
perceiving the world, and on the other side, it is a process limited by
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the individual human being who is carrying it out (i.e. it has a positive
effect: that of perceiving the outside world, and a negative effect: that
of the limited tools the individual applies – such as his senses, and his
mind – in perceiving the world).
This has, of course, its repercussions on man's life: for if this
consciousness resembles a lens which is constantly transmitting
pictures of the outside world, it can only in this case transmit a limited
number of pictures,; thereby withholding the rest of the wide world.
In this case, man perceives only that part of the picture that his
senses enable him to attain, added to the part that his mind enables
him to compose via his mental processes.
Differently put, consciousness has a positively crucial aspect;
as it is the window from which man can see the world, and an
negatively important negative aspect, as this window is limited and
unable to transmit objectively the (picture of) the outside world... the
thing that often leading to uncertainty and to making mistakes.
Consciousness, therefore, helps keep and protect mankind and
formulate his civilization, but, at the same time, it also creates many
difficulties, harassment, and even fighting, for man as he interacts
with the outside world. It sometimes, stands as a cause for the state of
underdevelopment which scan be seen as a result of the limited
consciousness and the incapacity of man's visions and understanding.
These negative effects (emanating from the limited
consciousness) appear clearly as one casts a glimpse on the nature of
the human perception that comes from two sources which hinder
objectivity:
1 – The Innate Source:
which This in turn depends on two types of perceived objects:
Axioms: what man perceives impulsively or spontaneously.
and these are available as a common asset to all mankind; and
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The concrete objects: which depend on man's sound senses.
And mistakes are likely to occur in perceiving concrete objects
not in perceiving axioms: for example, if a man looks at a fish in the
water, it appears closer than it really is.
2- The Aacquired Source:
The broad spectrum of knowledge which man composes
through piecing together the tiny details of pictures coming to him
from his senses as he relies on the axioms to form his new body of
knowledge: these become a cover over the axioms and therefore they
get affected by the person involved in the process, the thing which is
what allows room for making mistakes, especially with regard to nonexperimental objects.
Thus, there will be a state of gradation and progression in
making such mistakes: if mistakes do not exist in axioms, they barely
exist and become subjective in perceiving concrete objects, and they
exist in abundance with regard to all acquired sources. This renders
man unable, with such consciousness, to objectively reach objectively
the entire picture of the world.
Does this mean that man has been doomed to be partially blind
(as to perceiving the world) and to stay every now and then be
vulnerable to probable consciousness or to discrepancy and struggle?
Those One feels the legitimate legitimacy of these questions
which one feels their legitimacy as soon as he one turns away from, or
take no notice of ignores, the great achievements of human
consciousness was able to produce. In this case, we see that both
history and the present are full of examples of underdevelopment in
which we see millions of people prostrating before idols that can
neither hurt nor benefit them, and millions of people killing one
another for reasons (great or trivial) not meriting the souls wasted in
their cause.
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If human consciousness is malleable enough to be formed in
many ways, can anyone claim that all forms of consciousness are
correct? We notice that this consciousness is very often dragged into a
state of blindness, becoming and being unable to delineate and adopt
sound relationships to issues of closeness and clarity, such as the case
of the Fijians (dwellers of the Fijian Islands in the Pacific Ocean),
who are carnivorouse, take no interest in human life, live constantly in
a state of fear from one another, and count treachery as one of the
noble characteristics.
Shedding human blood in the Fijian culture is not a crime, it is,
rather, considered as an honor. They kill the handicapped, the crippled
and sick, people as well as two thirds of their newly borne, and
whoever stays alive amongst them, learns his first lesson by hitting his
mother.
They bury their slaves alive next to the posts of their king's
throne. They also slaughter 10 people or more as a baptism ceremony
or Christening for every boat that gets into the water is launched for
the first time. And they strangle the wives, the secretaries, and the
assistants of their prince as sign of respect (on his death).
Feeding on human flesh is a custom among these people, to the
extent that one of the princes while eulogizing his son mentioned in
his eulogy that he would not hesitate to kill his son's wives and eat
them up if they provoked him. They sometimes roast their human
preys alive before they devour them.
Such atrocities and inhumane practices are byproducts of a
particular consciousness and a particular cultural backgrounds which
sees man and his relationship to the world in a way that does not
qualify these actions for a bit of remorse, compunction or justification.
Of course, these Fijians are not the only example, nor is their
case is a general one, nor is it permanent, since culture is constantly in
a state of motion which knows no never stops.
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In any culture, however, the positive and the negative sides
often overlap, with one side dominating the other and claiming the
representation of that culture. There is never a perfect case. Or, we are
still waiting for such a perfect case of 'culture'.
We conclude by asserting that cultures differ in varying
degrees so as to attest to the flexibility of the human race, which is in
reality the ability to adapt itself to the nature of society where man is
born and lives. It is the macro characteristic of the greatest importance
to mankind which separates man from animal.
The multiplicity of human cultures is also the multiplicity of
ways of thought which man can take with him as he sets on to explore
the world with a view to unraveling its secrets and knowing its facts,
like when a glass of water is spilled on the floor and goes different
ways unless checked by something to halt its flow. In that case, man
would be liable to go the wrong way should that way be imposed on
him. And if we take into consideration the relationship of this thought
with reality, considering it as the locomotive that drags the entire life
behind it in any direction it goes, we come to realize the significance
of the process of thought formation and the gravity of the 'mistakes'
that consciousness can commit as it delineates its relationship with its
subjects or areas of concern.
Erring by taking what is not true as truth leads in the final to
having multiple visions about one issue, leaving everyone to believe
that what he has is truthful while others do not share his view. If
bigotry and narrow-mindedness prevails, differences and struggle
reigns high.
Therefore, we are being faced with a two-sided truth: cognitive
multiplicity constitutes a genuine part of human life and reflects man's
endeavors to attain truth, but, at the same time, it leads to conflict and
struggle. Culture is the man-made environment or 'the organic
environment' as expressed by Herbert Spencer, whose term did not
receive the same success in publication as the word 'culture'.
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Man begins dealing with the world as soon as man he exists
within a group, whereas he cannot exist anywhere else, by charting the
basic traits of his own culture. If we focus our attention on the
cognitive aspect of culture, then the parameters of knowledge
(consciousness) begins to take form, for it is linked to the individual
whose own personality does affects everything. However, we observe
that there are common denominators that are not affected by the
differences among men, while there are other parts in every individual
or group, which have their own discerning specificity.
Therefore, a state of similarity does exist between man's
biological and cognitive compositions.
Therefore, we can refer to the existence of a comprehensive
body of knowledge on which humans cannot disagree; while there are
special parts of knowledge espoused by certain civilizations, such as
the Greeks' concern for philosophy and the Arabs' for poetry and the
art of talking,; while both civilizations shied away from (or deserted)
industry and the rest of the professions. On reflecting, one finds that
such concerns (by the Greeks for philosophy and the Arabs for poetry,
and examples like these) hide passive judgments entertained by
culture entertains towards some aspects of mental or practical activity;
thereby discouraging people from it; or positive judgments that
encourage people to adhere to it.
This means that the true direction of in which a culture's
movement is tightly linked to its earlier phases of development. The
earlier phases of the development of any culture are responsible for
taking that culture towards those negative or positive judgments,
which means that for a perfect reading of a certain current culture, one
has to read the previous cycles of its past development;, for there are
always those phases which are always are responsible for the
formation of consciousness.
And if the actual state of any culture is the result of in previous
stages of its development, the process of development of any group's
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culture is similar to what happens to the individual during the thinking
process to produce new knowledge,) known in the science of logic as
('the movement of mind between the known and the unknown',) and
includes the movement from the research problem to the necessary
information for its treatment and finding the right solution to it.
This process, which the individual embarks on with a view to
adding new layers of knowledge, depends on what is previously stored
(i.e. on the knowledge he had previously acquired in his previous
time). This helps us imagine a tight series strand of knowledge
production.
It is difficult to imagine that any individual who does knows
himself or the universe around him can begin conducting research
from a scratch.
Not beginning from a scratch means, as it seems, that some of
the features of any next steps are already decided upon, being based
on the stored past experience, and this can shed light on the earliest
stages of knowledge formation,; those stages which determine the
features of this culture. and that any thread of bias or impartiality
becomes in such stages a crack that could has the potential to destroy
that culture in and take it blindfolded to the abyss.
This kind of blindness is the hegemony that we impose on
people when we pass onto them axioms and platitudes without
allowing them the privilege to of revising or critically judging these
axioms and platitudism. The individual, in his young ageth, may
admire those axioms that provide him with criteria to discern right
from wrong. These axioms are presented to him as true because they
correspond to these criteria.
An individual immersed in a particular culture never pays
attention to the abnormalities in its structure. And if people try to
criticize this culture, the group starts to resist them and tries to force
their compliance or to ostracize them; this is the thing that would lead
to multiplicity. Thus, any thinking process has to depend on "previous
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ideas or thoughts" which are themselves born by of earlier ideas.... ,
etc until we reach the moment of cultural formation. If any
individual's birth does not take place except within a certain culture,
the birth of any culture too also does not exist occur except from the
womb of a another previous culture, for cultures begin as tiny living
beings which continues to grow until they reach the state of dwindling
decline, falling off decaying and vanishing, to give way to a new
culture.
This is the fact what compelled some of the thinkers to
hypothesize the impossibility of the birth of a perfect culture without
outside interference.
One of those is Belkhanove, who said: "Hegel found himself in
that vicious circle as the French social scientists and historians wanted
to explain the social position, by the state of ideas and vice versa.
With such a deadlock, science still revolves around vicious circles
when it asserts that A is the cause of B".
This means that, for thought to help develop society, it needs
itself to be developed, for development is an increase, and the increase
requires a source to cause it.
We know that human thought helps develop society ... but the
question is, who develops the human thought? In the light of Western
thought, this issue stayed without solution remained unresolved, as the
Western philosophy could not find a solution to it. Actually,
development is indeed a material and concrete fact indeed, but it only
needs explanation which, in the Western philosophy remains as a
vacant point. If we were to go along with the Western philosophy, we
then have to admit the existence of this obstacle without laying our
hands on it, i.e. we have to concede the existence of an element that
represents the energy that propels thought to maturity and reaching its
peak, which is also, like any other energy, will start to subside and be
consumed in that process, leading to decline and dissolution of
reaching the peak to start the regressive demarche of going down. If
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we consider culture to be like an electron, and energy like a Light light
Photonphoton, then this electron moves suddenly due to its ability to
absorb the Photon photon and never come back to its original position
unless the energy runs out and the Electron descends to its natural
orbit.
In as much as we can explain the evolution of culture by the
advent of a certain factor, we can likewise explain cultural
deterioration by the expiration of that particular factor. We have to
notice, however, that this process is not senseless or that it does not
perform any role in history.
On the contrary, every cultural cycle leads to qualify power a
certain group of people through giving it a starting forward thrust
forward. This means that the process does not begin from a scratch but
from the last value added and kept retained by that culture as an
achievement. Therefore, we must understand culture through this
process of adaptation, that was referred to earlier,; i.e. mixing the
human self with the perceived objects transferred (to him) from the
outside world, for as long as intellect is the dynamic factor that
motivates culture, the factor that motivates thought must be intellect
too and not coming from inside the culture. If we say, it is coming
from within culture, then we will be running away from what we
feared: explaining the intellectual movement by intellect.
The end result will be a mixture of this thought which was not
produced by the individual and which in the final analysis represents
the cultural thrust in the human thought in the final analysis.
If man, on starting to examine his intellectual activity, knows that
his mind is not that clear mirror which transparently and purely
reflects truth or the real world; that what the eyes cannot see does not
directly reach the brain; and that true knowledge is hidden behind a
thick curtain of obstacles, then the effect of the outside external factor
on human thought is destined to pass through the same passages and
gets is tremendously affected by them, exactly as pure water would be
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affected by the pipes (it passes through them) when these pipes carry
other substances.
This is in itself multiplicity; for the outside external factor does
affect the ability of a great number of people to absorb the its effects
of such outside factors due to the existence of obstacles or to the fact
that such effects came directly to them or via intermediaries.
Therefore, the cases and the degrees of influence, will multiply
according to the process of interaction between man'/s thought and the
outside external factor. Therefore, we have to pay attention to the
lenses that constitute a basic element in taking our thoughts in certain
directions and dissuade them from other directions,; thereby
contributing to foregone conclusions and rules as they control both
introductions and results.
On using this argument, it becomes possible to discern between
minds and becomes plausible to say, for example, "an Arab mind, a
Western mind and an African mind"....;"
The mind is not the perceiving force that exists in the same
way in all nations, it is the references and the basics which are
different in cultures and in nations.
Thinking within the frameworks of a certain culture means
thinking through a system of reference that is an offshoot of this
culture with all its accumulated knowledge that includes the social
surrounding, the cultural heritage, the outlook for the future, and the
outlook towards regarding man, the world and the universe as
determined by this given culture.
This means that the cognitive character will always remain as
long as those references and bases exist; thereby empowering us to
delineate the frameworks and the milestones for the situations
positions (taken) and the rulings that we pass in the light of such
references.
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It is necessary, here, to refer to a partial difference between
mind and the "preconceived ideas"; for the first is decided by the
actual parameters of culture, whereas the "preconceived ideas" have a
dynamic nature that follows those thrusts which occur in this
structure, and the developments which are achieved through the
knowledge incremental process, and opens the horizon for all cases of
friction and interaction as long as it is able to fall into place in that the
cognitive structure of this culture. The "preconceived ideas" are that
those accepted parts of axioms, references and platitudes; and
therefore, they are the most important components (of those
references) since they constitute the tool that allows the addition of
any new knowledge to these references as right, or the expulsion of
such new knowledge as wrong.
That is why we see that the ideas cause disputes and struggles
when they converge or diverge; they also stand also behind all sorts of
bigotry and bias; and they permit the new knowledge to belong and
conform to the system after its soundness or unreliability is decided.
These ideas, being as such, then we must return to them as
culture begins to take shape, for they stand behind development or
regression. For this reason, the "science of history of ideas" emerged
in at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment Age to transform this
truth into an image of action, and to discover the aspects of
dysfunction in thinking. This science was defined as, "the science that
studies the ideas in the larger sense of the word", i.e. the whole aspects
of consciousness: its attributes, its laws; its relations to the world and
to its origin".
This science was itself based on 'preconceived ideas', which
represented the axioms of the Enlightenment Age and the ways of that
Age, which were responsible for deciding which ideas and concepts
were right and which were wrong.
Therefore, this attempt too fell in the trap of the 'preconceived
ideas' of the age in which it was born, and let many of judgments
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stand in the row as scientific facts (while which they are not as such),
especially in the field of humanitarian sciences which to some people
resembled ,to some people, fact in the natural sciences and stamped
our age by with its own mark, ;was enabling pass judgments to be
passed and offered them as axioms,; and helping spread many firm
convictions,; thereby directing human thought in particular ways and
changing its position towards the pillars of human existence.
of which the position towards religion is one of its blunders
was that it marginalized religion and relied instead on the exegeses
given by modern science, in which the ideas derived of the
Renaissance Age played an important part in its birth and, transformed
it to adopting a general stand position through whereby they examined
the heritage of mankind and led to excluding anything that did not
conform, to such exegeses without attempting to prove whether such
exegeses were objective facts or merely by-products of preconceived
ideas.
History has recorded the acceptance by many Western thinkers
of hasty judgments against religion as only a human product which
has nothing to do with the unseen beyond our materialistic world.
They explained the differences among religions as having to do with
the degree of development of man's thinking: i.e. to them, man in the
stage of mythical thinking was able to produce preliminary primitive
religions; when he perceived the world with a scientific vision, he
produced religions that worshipped nature, and finally as he got more
sophisticated, he produced monotheistic religions.
This depiction of religion was only the product of the rational
thinking which assigned great significance to the human mind and
made it the basis for explaining all phenomena, ;taking no notice of
ignoring the fact that such rationales were influenced by the
conditions of their birth, that giving them a degree of absolutism
towards religion and the whole of the unseen world. Thus, we
comprehend how non-objective 'preconceived ideas' can have negative
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impacts, even though they are necessary for any thinking process that
cannot be fruitful without relying on these preconceived ideas.
Thus, we lay our hands on the secret of a;; struggles and
bigotry that leads to closing the paths of thought and causes
consciousness to follow adopt positions not which do not rely on
sound introductions and, hence, the faulty results.
It is the transformation of man's self to one part of his
preconceived ideas; as these ideas before they materialize , they were
merely ideas in the heads of some of those who we are directed, and
moved to the others afterwards, and to become one of the origins of
culture itself, and finally be built-in and stealthily affecting, the
cultural sub-consciousness; especially if they occur at those moments
of founding the nation or of the birth of its cultural and civilizational
character.
Human knowledge, then, is closely tied to the man who
undergoes the thinking process, albeit with imperfect tools, and whose
mere existence within the confines of a dominant culture, constitutes
part of that imperfection, thereby producing hegemony over man's
thinking and imposing common denominators to be taken as axioms
that prevail in the consciousness of any group. We often find that
these axioms are forced upon the group through oppressive means by
politicians, sorcerers, clergy, or fortune-tellers.
This imperfection, taken as a whole, represents all the selves of
men that forbid objective and free thinking; the thinking; the
preconceived ideas attained in that manner takes our thinking into
along already decided paths which represent imperfection in the
means of perception, and a strong deviation from the ability to form
sound and objective knowledge. Therefore, culture at the time of its
birth carries within it the germs of these preconceived ideas.
Because of this natural inclination, man cannot attain
objectivity, even though his own existence in life cannot continue
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without that objectivity; for if man was left to himself, he can attain
nothing but deterioration.
And making analogies with the beast here is of no use as the
latter can survive without consciousness due to the existence of
differences between man and the beast. The animal is motivated by
instinct which is equal to the mind in humans. It does not do any
thinking to survive as it depends in everything respect on the moment
it is in. Its relations with the rest of its kind is a fixed one, and so is its
behavior. And it does not need consciousness.
As for the human being, consciousness to for him is not a
luxury that he can live without: i.e. it is necessary for his living.
Likewise, the difference in the laws governing the lives of man and
the beast, is the same one that requires establishes the significance of
any organ of the human body, even though consciousness is not
biological but spiritual, and the essence of the human being who
cannot live without it and cannot thrive without brains.
The Duality of Mind and Wahi (Heavenly Revelation):
We notice that man dwindles without his mind; for he cannot
survive without acquiring large amounts of knowledge which can be
obtained only through the process of learning and the mind itself. To
do the acquiring of e such knowledge, man needs to be trained so that
his talent of perception can be transformed into action.
This, coupled with the man's natural imperfection referred to
earlier, becomes is indicative of his inability to attain knowledge by
himself, not to mention his inability to reach what the level he is
enjoying at in our time. His survivability and endurance itself become
into question due to the fact that because he is unable to objectively
perceive himself and the world.
For example, why hasn't man thought (in the cold times of his
early evolution cycles when it was difficult to find food and
subsistence) of eating his wife, children and his neighbors?
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As long as he we find that man, despite the appearance of
urbanity and civilization, was not inhibited from eating the human
flesh, as in the examples cited earlier in this work. In addition, the
Arabs used, one thousand years ago, to bury their daughters alive?
There must have been inhibitors that prevented man from
doing this in the times of barbarianism and ignorance. If such
practices appeared, it would have been imperative to stop them, of
course. Man's wiled practices are the best proof of his inability to
objectively perceive the facts of existence by himself,; not to mention
his ability to behave on its accordingly. How, then, could the primitive
man (survive and behave, when his) whose capabilities and
perceptions were supposed to be weak and whose knowledge was not
as abundant as ours?
The primitive man's problem is unique as he did not have
knowledge to lean on while running his life, since his state was
supposed to be close to that of the beasts on the one hand, and on the
other he was not an animal, to relying only on the instinct.
Therefore, this cycle of human existence lacked the means of
survival unless he was able to possess ready and objective ideas: ready
because man in at that time did not have the chance to accumulate
knowledge, as the risk of vanishing was around him at any moment.
Indeed, vanishing from life was nearer to him from than his ability to
acquire knowledge: there he had to struggle with wild beasts, poisons
and sickness, and to protect and shield himself from severe weather
and to learn how to make his own food...., i.e. he needed tens of pieces
of knowledge to obtain to stay alive.
When we say objectivity, is that because the size extent of
knowledge accumulated so far is connected to an objective start?
because if this start was subjective, it would have ended in the first
cycle of history.
What preceded attests to the fact that this case cannot be
explained away from other than through Al-Wahi (Heavenly
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Revelation), which has accompanied the growth of man as repeated in
many verses of the Qur'an: "we taught him" words which indicate that
man continued to receive knowledge from his Creator, and that man's
knowledge is God-inspired and not produced by him solely alone or
though interaction with his environment.
Contrary to what social sciences would contend attempt to
prove (that man's mind was able to produce religion), it was religion
that produced man's mind, "the formed mind".
The lack of the natural imperfection that we have referred to
cannot be remedied without revelation (Al-Wahi (Heavenly
Revelation)), which is the objective knowledge that does not get
affected by man's lenses (consciousness), for it is ready and revealed
from the Creator of absolute science, which is the knowledge that no
human mind, in need of previous knowledge, was able to produce, and
is the knowledge that would be the cause for enables the production of
everything that comes henceforth.
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Chapter 2Two
Faith and Structure of Civilization
Structure
The concept of truth in Islam is one of the best donations to
mankind. It is a complex concept that is not based on the competition
between the means of obtaining knowledge with a view to making one
victorious over the other. And it is a concept that does not belong only
to the material world, only but it goes beyond that to the levels of the
unseen, to the extent that God made it one of His holy names.
Thus, Islam is against the idea of incarnation (personification
or embodiment) which, across through out the history of mankind, has
been one of the biggest causes of human misery and despair.
Those who accepted the argument that God can be embodied
in a human being, had to think of God in a humanlike form that likes
humans. Assuming the existence of a similarity between God and the
human being led to boasting, haughtiness, egotism and arrogance;
thereby giving more room to, and sometime justifying, racism.
Likewise, the idea of the embodiment of God into a certain
people led to the idea of the Chosen people (by God) in Judaism,
which was greatly responsible for the isolation of Jews in almost in all
societies they lived in... and also to the differentiation in the treatment
of Jews with each other from their treatment with no-Jews or the
Goem.
While believing in a God as the Perfect, the Absolute, the One
who cannot be embodied in a single person or in an ethnic group of
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people is guarantee of equality (in its comprehensive meaning) among
all humans who are equal with no shortcomings or exceptions.
Thus, negating the idea of incarnation or embodiment (of God)
altogether, closes the door before dividing the peoples of the earth into
dichotomies: holy versus non-holy or desecrated; or politically
speaking, into hegemonic versus dominated or into any other
dichotomy that plagued the history of mankind in which the
desecrated were to be subjugated.
God cannot be compared to anything or to anyone else, and the
people are, therefore, equal in being humans ... all of them possess the
ability to choose between good and evil... no one of them can attribute
to himself a special connection to God on which he or she claims
certain privileges or rights above all other human beings.
In Islam, Truth has a central unique position that makes it a
criterion for judging all other positions, ideas, or relations regardless
of whatever the conditions and circumstances might be.
The centrality and uniqueness of Truth in Islam did prevent
any other contradicting conceptualizations. This has to do, of course,
with the supremacy of conflictive ideas, the inability to accept the
'other', and finally to the extent of annihilation or the total destruction
of the 'other'. We will come to this, in details, very soon. If we accept
the rule that says that "contrasts makes vivid images", then the
comparison between the Islamic and the pragmatic conceptualizations
of truth makes illuminates the picture to us
Aside from the fact that in pragmatism, the idea of utility in
the final analysis assumes an advanced position over truth which
resulted in making ability the only criterion for preference; thereby
dividing humanity into:
- The strong or "the superman" who a super being above all
humans and who enjoys absolute rights with no scruples to hinder him
or her; and
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- The weak: or "the sub man" who is lower than, and should be
subservient to, the superman.
Based on this dichotomy, sanctity was added to the conflict as
a norm of the relationship between the two sides. Thus, the choice was
transformed from a moral concept revolving around goodness (i.e.
from being an absolute good) into a conflictive concept mixing
together brands extracted from Darwinism and the ideas of Nietzsche
which extremely exalts power and makes it as a sign for the choice.
With the multiplicity of truth, its sanctity was removed and
with that concepts like goodness, mercifulness, forgiving, and altruism
which constituted part and parcel of humanitarianism of the human
being were also removed.
The Western history, particularly the period of Renaissance
period, is replete with writings demeaning other nations on accounts
of the state of underdevelopment those nations were passing through.
This in itself marks the difference between Islamic culture and the
Western culture, which often represents, in the eyes of many Muslims,
the more advanced culture that transformed the right to live – the most
sanctified of all human rights – from being a God-given right one
which man deserves only by the grace of God, into a relative cause to
be judged by relative considerations in which the West replaces God
by man.
If man does not possess the power to grant the right to live, he
still wants to give himself the right to waste it according to an
objective criterion depicting himself as the 'center' of the 'model'.
At the philosophical level, the history of philosophy used to
reveal, up to the coming of Islam, two distinctive orientations:
The first orientation: the hitherto prevailing conceptualization
of the idea of Contrast (the necessary and inevitable confrontation
between two – or more – different or distinctive elements or factors)
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which necessarily leads theoretically to a conflict between such
factors or elements.
That is to say that the conflict between the thesis and its antithesis determines the final outcome – an idea which have has
traditionally delineated the philosophical conceptualization of the term
conflict from Plato, to Hegel and Marx, and which is the prevalent
orientation of the Western philosophy in general; and the second
philosophical orientation postulates that Contrast is the essence of the
existence itself.
Islam came to establish yet a third philosophical orientation or
tradition; one that stands at a distance from these two Western
philosophical orientations and is tilted towards a collective
conceptualization of the existence comprising all its aspects and
'contrasts'.
According to this brand new Islamic philosophy, humanity
was able to experience for the first time ever the idea of reconciliation
between many of existing contradicting contradictory dualisms such
as: matter/abstract... heart/mind ...soul /body, ... as well as between all
other conceptualizations which attempted to fully appreciate the
demarche of man on this earth.
This Qur'anic exhortation is not a cultural choice on which
people may take or leave; ,but it is, rather, a thing ordained (obligatory
commandment), deviating from which deserves God's punishment, He
(exalted be His name) says: "And thus have We made you Ummatan
Wassatan (an exalted nation), that you may be guardians over men,
and the Messenger of God may be a guardian over you".
Wassatyiah as a condition for civilization
: It is important to note down that Islam, made the Muslimn
Ummah (nation of reverence) a reference for other nations; its
message and its duty to mankind, and its function, will not be fulfilled
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(on earth) as should be, unless it rises up to the level of civilizational
reverence or wassatiyah (as commended commanded by God).
This nation (of Islam) which Allah depicted as the nation of
goodness and reverence, won't be able to get involved in any
comprehensive civilizational task unless it fully appreciates the nature
of its mission and to possess the ability to discover the laws that
govern civilization and the illnesses that haves long afflicted its
structure.
The concept of Wassatiyah is the reform crucial to the
realization of the civilizational message of Islam. Al-Wassatiyah, as
expounded in the Qur'an and the tradition of the prophet, is a pivotal
concept in understanding the traits, the duties, and the message of the
nation of Islam, which is directed towards broad concepts such as
goodness, universality, humanity, mercy and the best manners of
comprehensive civilizational Islam beyond all ethnicities, languages,
races, and cultures, or 'paternal imitations'.
The big issue today for, and the objectives of, this Ummah
which carries such a huge civilizational project is not searching for
domination over, control of, struggle with, or dispersing of others. Nor
is its biggest issue, as it passes through the riskiest stage of its
existence with regard to its values, morals, culture, heritage and
religion under the Western hegemony which has led man to the peaks
of the stupefying and miraculous scientific achievement in all fields of
human activity, looking for domination and power.
The Muslim nation should not worry about the acquisition of
dangerous (nuclear, biological, or chemical) weapons and power, like
other nations which look for strive to dominating others, as they are in
a constant state of fear and despair. This Muslim Ummah possesses
yet another power, and other weapons included in the religion of
Islam, in its universal vision, in its Shar'iah, in its methodology, in its
morals and its people and its message.
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A distinction that diminished, even inadvertently, the western
logic which portrays the Western civilization with all its scientific
achievements while giving no credit whatsoever to our Ummah.
Al-Wassatiya hand realism represent the 'biggest Islamic truth'
which determines the position of Islam and the Ummah in the cultural
and civilizational consciousness of mankind. The tenets and precepts
of Al-Islam have never been those of a merely spiritual religion
resting mainly in its teachings, principles, legislations, and rituals, on
the spiritual aspects of the human being,; thereby neglecting the
multidimensional nature of this human being, nor is it a religion that
deprives man of his needs for living in a world of full of luxuries,;
thereby contradicting the laws of existence and ignoring the fact of
Istikhlaf (man's succession on earth), which makes man's existence
meaningful, corresponding to the laws of the universe, and necessary
for life in this world.
Thus, Islam has always been a religion in which the accurate
rules of intention, order integration, and comprehensiveness are
reflected.
On the meaning of Wassatiyah, we find that the wassat (the
middle) of everything is its best; and in the Qur'anic verse cited
earlier, it means 'straightforward and good'. And the Islamic Ummah
has been depicted as Ummah Wassat, meaning that it bears witness
on, and administers justice among, all other nations; thereby setting
their record of values, principles, traditions, mottoes and slogans, and
the criterion with which they can distinguish between right and wrong.
Therefore, the Islamic Ummah does not receive any directives
related to its values and conceptions from any other nations on which
it is appointed as witness, and an adjudicator and a referee. At the
same time, the prophet (God's peace be upon Him) is the witness on
the Ummah of Islam which is witness on other nations,; thereby
possessing the last word in all its affairs. And for the Ummah to
perform that function, it is not allowed to go to the extremes; i.e. it
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should be always in the middle ground, neither too spiritual nor too
materialistic... in a word, it should follow the Fetrah. Don't you see
that this Ummah is located in the navel of the earth, 'the umbilicus'?
Al-Wassatiyah in Islam is a moral orientation, an universal
approach and a civilizational control necessary for the life of the
individual and the group, and for the entire Islamic experience: the
vision, the civilization, the cultural... all require this meaning of
wassatiyah referred to in the Qur'anic verse cited earlier.
From this concept of wassatiyah, spring all big Islamic
concepts (legislative, creed and moral) concepts. If man's conduct
departs from the outer limits and controls of this cultural and
civilizational wassatiyah, there will be an imbalance, a lack of
harmony, and an erratic movement of both the individual and the
Ummah; thereby depriving Muslims of the rationality of civilization
as we can see in some parts of the Muslim world nowadays, which
leading to weakness and underdevelopment.
As we talk about the Wassatiyah of Islam, we are talking about
a human congregation of people which shows the signs of Istikhlaf
(succession of man's God on earth), and about a real world of historic,
cultural, and civilizational aspects embodied in the highest fashion
ever in the two periods: that of the prophet (God's peace be upon Him)
and that of the his most rational successors (Khalifs). In today's world,
this reality is replicable as well.
The middle nation (the wassat) is an achievement performed
by the Islamic group as it mingles with other nations and cultures; this
means that it is a structure (erected and delineated succinctly by the
prophet, God's peace be upon Him) that depicts this Ummah as the
only nation amongst all to be of in that position (wassat).
Consequently, bearing witness on other people (civilizations
and cultures) is a qualified act of Istikhlaf (succession) that reflects the
reality of this nation of Al-Islam as a project for a balanced
civilizational construct on earth to be capable of absorbing the
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incoherent and chaotic existence of man and transforming it into a
state of balanced and orderly world of coordinated and coherent
power, stability, progress and culturally comprehensiveness construct
(that befits man's existence as the successor of God on this earth).
It is also 'an actual presence of the Islamic civilizational
existence amongst the big and exciting human events of humanity.
This balanced and effective presence includes all aspects of Islamic
consciousness, affection, thought, identity, culture, civilization, and
sociology, as well as the universal Islamic vision and the Islamic
civilizational achievement.
As for the state of civilizational Shuhud (bearing witness on
mankind), it is a degree of maturity, thoughtful creativity, renewal,
coherence, strength, and unity which make the Ummah capable of
fulfilling an effective role in the chart and in the strategy of the
contemporary world's civilizational human action. It is also the
Islamic action that helps realize for the Ummah its centrality and its
leadership and activates its civilizational reference until the Ummah
becomes a source of cultural and religious radiation in people's real
livfes and in the present cultures and civilizations.
For the Ummah to carry out the burden of this Shuhud, it has
to shoulder the responsibility of comprehensive civilizational
guidance of all its material and moral energies so as to achieve the full
civilizational development and, consequently, bring the Ummah to the
central place of civilizational Shuhud.
What does the absence of such an Ummah mean?
Will Durant answered this question in his work "The Story of
Civilization" as he was describing the conditions of nations which did
not have any share of the sound upbringing brought forth to their
followers by Heavenly religions or of the civilizational education that
God revealed in His last message to mankind, either because of the
fact we are about to relate, or because the call of Islam did not reach
these nations. We are going to choose – only – feeding on human flesh
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as a shocking phenomenon that represents the utmost degrees of
deviation from the fact that God (exalted be His name) has dignified
the human being, whose body is to be forbidden dead or alive.
Durant says: "the three meal system that the human being eats
every day is a social classy system, whereas the barbarian people
either refrain from eating or devour what they have in one repast;
letting themselves grow fat thereby".
Having described the evolution of human customs of eating,
Durant said: "man added to his varieties of food that we mentioned
earlier, a new variety which was the most delicious of all – his fellow
human being – as eating human flesh was known at the time".
"We have found it among all primitive tribes as well as among
peoples who came later in Ireland or in Iberia and the Pect group, and
even among the people of Demark in the eleventh century as eating
human flesh was necessary among many tribes as a means of living
before people knew how to bury their dead. In the Upper Congo,
people, men, women and children used to be bought and sold alive as
edible food stuffs".
"And in the new British Island, human flesh used to sold in
shops exactly as Butchers do nowadays with animal flesh; likewise the
inhabitants of the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands used to feed
their victims up until they grow obese, especially when they are
women in order to offer them in banquets as if they were pigs; the
Fijians too used to regard women a little bit above dogs since dogs are
neither delicious nor tasty according to what they used to say; and
when Pierre Luti was passing by the Island of Haiti, one of its elders
explained to him the taste of his food by indicating that the flesh of a
roasted white man is as delicious as ripe banana".
"The Fijians, however, did not like the white man's flesh,
claiming that it is saltier and its fabric is thicker than other kinds of
flesh. Therefore, when an European sailor was captured by the Fijians,
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they did not consider him a prospective delicious meal for a man from
Polynesia was considered more scrumptious".
Durant, by asking a question about the origin of this habit,
stirred a big discussion.
"He answered the question by reiterating that, contrary to what
people used to believe, there was no proof that that habit came to
existence due to the lack of other kinds of food; for had that been the
case, lip-smacking with human flesh continued after shortage in other
sorts of food was gone as human habit since human nature is exactly
like this: it gets addicted to a certain pattern of behavior as long as it
found human flesh to be appealing".
"Even primitive vegetarians were quickly getting used to this
kind of food. Tribesmen were in the habit of sucking human blood;
even though they possess otherwise tender hearts and magnanimous
souls; thus, at times they take it as a medicine, at other times, they
considered it as one of their religious rituals, or promise fulfillingmascot, or they used to take it as a tonic. No one of them used to feel
ashamed of such behavior of preferring human flesh and it seemed
that those primitive peoples were not in the habit of differentiating in
their judgments between morality and feeding on human flesh".
And that was the most important reason, since abstaining is a
notion that has 'unseen' roots, while forbidding may be ephemeral,
disappearing to go the moment its cause or causes are gone. The
problem, as Durant saw it, is a moral one and a proof that civilization
cannot exist without a religion to guide its way, as it cannot only be
the production of more machines!!
Durand went on to say: "It is with a sense of pride that in
Melanesia, the president invites his friends to a feast composed of
roasted human flesh. One of the Brazilian presidents once said: "As
long as I am able to kill my enemy, there is no doubt that it is better
for me to eat him instead of leaving him because this would be quite a
waste..."
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"it is not the worst case in which a human being is eaten, the
worst is when he dies... if I am killed, it would equal to me if I am left
or eaten up by the enemy of my tribe... to me nothing among all kinds
of hunt is more delicious than the human flesh... It is true that you
white people have reached the peak in tasting food".
But what came after that was even more dangerous, as the
habit of eating human flesh was transformed into a task of social
benefit. Durant says: "there is no doubt that that habit has had some
socially specific gains: for the plan offered by Soft preceded in
existence with regard to the use of unneeded children, then it moved
to allow old people to die the kind of death which would be beneficial
for others. Besides, there is also the view that considers funerals as
unnecessary extravagance or lavishness. Monteney too used to believe
persecuting or torturing a human being until he or she dies albeit
under the guise of piety and religiousness is worse that roasting and
eating him".
Here we come face to face with a the absence of unseen
incentives, moral motives or any criteria. With this criteria, as we shall
see later.
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Chapter Three 3
Morality & the Structure of Civilization
In the preceding pages, we have tackled the position of the first
of the three values on which our definition of civilization rests. In the
following pages, we will be treating the value of 'freedom' as we
address the role of morals in the establishment of civilization.
The Islamic position on the issue of freedom is considered one
of the basic mainstays of the Islamic message that confronted all sorts
of numerous submissiveness which used to surround all human beings
at the social, economic, political and cultural levels.
Islam's stand vis-a-vis the cause of liberty, is considered to be
one of the basic mainstays in the message of Al-Islam. which in the
face of the many forms and types of submissiveness experienced by
mankind socially, economically, politically, and/or culturally in other
cultures, Islam exalted the two values of 'contracting' and 'consenting'
as two important consequences of man's possession of the right to
choose. That was why Islam forbade and nullified coercion in religion
and in (entering into) contracts,; and activated the value of
compassion in order to put a brake on the contracting system, thereby
disallowing preventing it from becoming so rigid or a goal in itself.
Islam lumped all these values into one composition so the end result
was a system where Attaqwa (the fear of God) which is available to
everyone, became the criterion with which all people could be judged
and did not make Attaqwa something to be inherited or to be granted
only at someone else's will or consent.
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The companions of the prophet (God's peace and mercy be
upon Him) realized that fact as many of them reiterated: "We are
come to take people out of the darkness of serfdom the light of
liberty".
There is a dialectical relationship between the oneness of God
which is the heart of the Islamic faith and the concept of liberty which
is considered a necessary condition for the soundness of the belief
itself.
If one takes a moment to contemplates over the Islamic
legislation for organizing the life of mankind whether in the field of
fighting against serfdom and slavery, or the emancipation of women,
or in combating tyranny and despotism,.... one finds out that the
liberation of individuals and of groups is characteristic of this
legislation. And from the standpoint of culture, by taking an
antagonistic position against coercion in religion and entering into
contracts, Islam gave humanity the best bestowment ever.
The concept of liberation in Islam is comprehensive stretching
from Aqeeda (faith) to daily dealings to culture, that is why dialogue
was taken as one of the most effective media of interaction in Muslim
societies; underlying the fact that disagreement is natural among
humans and that persuasion and convincing are the criterion for what
is known as "cultural circulation" (a term I use to describe an
historical Islamic contribution which came to interrupt century of
continued march of man characterized by suppression, humiliation,
and of decisions imposed from above by some religious or political
authority.
Under the shadow of this cultural circulation, many different
religions and philosophical sects coexisted, the centers of cultural
influence were able to move from the East of the Muslim World to its
West.
The Arab World which has always been at the heart of the
Muslim World, did not deny the extreme parts of the Islamic Empire,
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from Andalusia to the central Asia, from having its own say or its own
contribution or its right to actively participate in establishing the
edifice of knowledge of Muslim culture.
This Islamic value system, comprehensive as it is, was able to
establish the relationship among people and between Man – as an
individual or a member of a certain group – and God on the basis of
liberty; thus, the existence of Islam in the Balkans did not eradicate
Christianity with all its denominations, and the same applies to
Andalusia and India which stayed, for centuries, under Muslim rule.
This value system of Islam attained perfection through
responsibility which, at the same time, is both worldly and religious,
as two sides of one coin, where everyone accepts the consequences of
his choices.
The issue of liberty was, and still is, a condition for the
soundness of faith and a condition for the legal binding of all
contractual relationships in society; be this relationship economic or
political, to the extent that the absence of such liberty is not merely a
problem among the elite, but, rather, a social problem.
For political systems must do the following:
1 – They must be an expression of the ruled peoples;
2 – They must maintain the societies they rule as the basis
from which they derive their legitimacy; and
3 – They must preserve the strengths of these societies; not
intentionally to weakening these societies by domination or
exploitation as a means of extracting the loyalties of their societies.
Islam established relationships among the people within clear,
sanctified, and Godly limits and confines; thereby putting an end to
the thought of permissiveness with its both its meanings political and
moral meanings and thereby forbidding the strong from infringing on
the weak, or encroaching on others' rights.
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Islam boosted up or heightened the idea of limits and
boundaries by asserting the human nature of the Messenger of God.
Also, the idea of a last message from Heaven to mankind has been a
great gift from Allah as with which this man possessed the ability to
reconstruct the earth and to fulfill the notion of Istikhlaf (succession
on earth) as he was given enough lawful knowledge from experience
and the unseen sources.
In order to assess the price man has to pay when he chooses to
believe in metaphysics without any commanding legislative system,
and to want to subjugate the process of social organization strictly to
the rule of trial and error, we present here some examples of the fruits
of such a methodology in the issue of liberty itself which some
consider as the most important achievements of the rationality system:
in the USA, for as a hasty quick example, we mention the following:
Section 207, chapter 8 of the Mississippi constitution
predetermined that: "it should be observed that white children must be
separated from black children and each should have its own separate
schools". Also, section 225 of the tenth chapter stated that: "Congress
shall do its best to separate black inmates from white". And in chapter
14, section 263 said: "Mixed marriages between white and black
people, or between a white person and a colored person whose blood
is one eighth black is to be considered illegal and null".
The following statement may be the most astonishing in the
Mississippi laws: "whoever, prints, publishes or distributes printed,
typed or hand-written leaflets or publications that incite the public to
call for social equality and mixed marriage, or to offer ideas and
arguments in this regard will be prosecuted for violating the laws by
paying a fine not exceeding $500.00,or being incarcerated for a period
not exceeding six months or by the two punishments together,
In a document presented to the United Nations in February
1947 under the title, "A Call to the World", the national assembly for
the upgrading of the colored people stated that: "Similar pieces of
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legislation to those of Mississippi should be applied to the States of
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida,
Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas,. and some less cruel
legislation to be applied in the States of: Delaware, West Virginia,
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. Still there are eight northern
States that forbid mixed marriage: California, Colorado, Idaho,
Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah.
The call goes on to extend the oppression of the colored black
people in the USA by stating that: "In 20 of the Union States, black
students are obligatorily segregated from the white students. As for
the State of Florida, its laws stipulate that the books of blacks must be
separated from the books of their white schoolmates!!"
In 14s States, the law imposed on required black train
passengers to be separated from white passengers, and in eight states,
the law imposed separate rooms for the residents of each color. On
buses, segregation is was imposed by law in eleven states,... and there
were laws that separate black sick people in hospitals from the whites.
Separation of black from white people was a must in jails, hospitals,
and reformatories in eleven states. And there were laws of separation
between the two colors in many other countless other American
institutions.
Citing such examples here is enough to indicate where
oppression to the colored people was taking place with the blessings
of the law. In Oklahoma, the law necessity the erection of separate
phone cabins for the colored people; in Texas, white whistlers
wrestlers are forbidden from wrestling with black ones; and in South
Carolina, black and white workers are not allowed to mix at cotton
textiles factories or to use the same doors for entering or exiting the
factories.
In 1957, the USA witnessed an historic event when President
Eisenhower ordered his forces to occupy the State of Arkansas and to
dissolve its state army of 10,000, soldiers; explaining to the American
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public that he took those measure to erase the stamp of disgrace that
showed the entire world in general and the communist world in
particular that human rights in the US were wasted, as the governor of
Arkansas insisted on forbidding the entry of black students into the
schools of the white, thereby refraining from the implementation of a
Federal court ruling under the pretext that desegregation would lead to
bloodshed in the state.
Arkansas needed a transitional period of about six years to go
back to normal and to instate the law of desegregation in nursery
schools in 1963.
On the other side, all over through the history of mankind,
religions denied and negated one another. And this led to paths of
blood as believers of each faith stood in defense of their choice.
As for Islam, it did not deny or negate the Heavenly messages
as it recognized Judaism and Christianity, with some reservations
referring only to certain alterations that were added to the revelations
in the Holy Bible.
Islam also built a fine relationship with the followers of these
two Heavenly religions, who were to be judged by their actions not by
the title of their book. Thus, the Qur'an differentiated between the
closest in Mawada (love) and the severest in Adawa (animosity).
Islam did not seek to promote conflicts with these two
religions. It protected their rights and made it compulsory for Muslims
to do so.
Making the protection of Jews and Christians an Islamic
obligation is something that has never been experienced by the
followers of any other religions all over the history of mankind in
dealing with or accepting 'the other'. Islam did also made proselytizing
(inviting non-Muslims to enter the Islamic faith) the basis of the
relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, with the
understanding that Islam forbade coercion in order to confirm that
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liberty was to be protected and not to be violated even for such an
honorable objective.
Duality of quenching or postponing the one's wishes:
Islam has also reconciled man with its basic instinct by
allowing man him to quench his needs without falling into the swarms
of vice or into contradicting his own nature through self-mortification.
It also accorded man the right of ownership and possession
through making the relationship between man and society a creative
not conflictive relationship.
In Islam, man‘s relationship with his own body is established
on the basis of his ability to postpone his desires and wishes (sex,
hunger and thirst...), which are separated by the distance of one's
choice and by the wise ability of man to put off indulgence, ion the
belief that whoever is able to put off indulgence, would be more able
to refrain from committing the sin of a forbidden undertaking.
"When a Muslim abstains from eating and drinking, and from
sex for the entire month of Ramadan; therewith being in total control
of his body needs and conditioning himself to putting Fetrah above
instinct and reaffirming his humanity not reversing Fetrah to follow
instinct as animals, or even less than animals can do '"They are like
the beast or even worse'".
The experience coming from the Western sociology refers to
the fact that reverting to the logic of immediate fulfillment of one's
desires and wishes: "now here and here now" has insanely unfettered
man's instincts, as can be seen, we ironically, see it happens in the
more liberal societies.
Freedom and Shar'ah:
The cause of freedom rouses gives rise to the chronic debate
over the issue of 'forbidding' in all religions. In the story of the
creation of Adam (peace be upon Him) there is an example of this
right.
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When Allah housed him Adamand his wife in Paradise and
gave them the choice of eating from the fruits of all any of the trees
therein except for one tree He made forbidden for to them without
explaining why, He (exalted be His name) said: "And O Adam, dwell
thou and thy wife in the garden and eat there from wherever you will,
but approach not this tree lest you be among the wrongdoers".
And when the devil was able to seduce them into eating from
that tree, he did so by arousing in themselves the instinct of love for
eternal life. He (exalted be His name) said: "But Satan whispered evil
suggestions to them so that he might make known to them what was
hidden from them of their shame, and said, ‗Your Lord has only
forbidden you this tree, lest you should become angels or such beings
as live forever".
Thus, God's forbidding was not given a justification which
could to be rationally accepted by on the basis of man's reason, while
the whispering of the devil was justified. Besides, the story lays down,
as I can see it, the most important rule in the relationship between man
and God: that is submissiveness to the will of God whether or not man
is able to comprehend God's unfathomable wisdom, and lays down
yet, another rule that rarely can any civilization can deviate from:, that
is "every civilization has its own taboos".
Regardless of what many secularists see observe that in Islam that
Shari'a, delineates the relationship between man and God by putting
limitations on man's ability to choose, but secularism itself has its own
taboos. In Webster‘s dictionary for example, secularism means, "a
way of looking at life through excluding and ignoring religion and all
religious considerations, and hence, it is a moral system that depends
on the premise that all moral levels and social conducts must be
referred to life and not to religion".
And in the British Encyclopedia Britannica it is defined as, "a
movement in society that explains life on earth away from the
unseen... as in the Middle Ages, there appeared a strong tendency that
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pushed religious people to despising worldly affairs and concentrating
on the contemplation of the existence of God and on life after death...
and as a reaction to that tendency secularism came into existence at
the time of the Renaissance and presented itself as a means to fulfill
man's needs; especially when people began to pay attention to the
human cultural achievements and their looking forward to having
them realized in this world".
The American encyclopedia Encyclopedia Americana also
defines secularism as, "a moral theory based on principles and
premises of nature and independent from Heavenly religions and the
unseen. George Holyoke is considered to be the first to suggest it as a
philosophical and social system in England in 1846. And the first
axioms of secularism is freedom of thinking for oneself, and the right
to disagree (with others) about any issue as an added value to that
right which include the right to prove one's point".
Finally, secularism asserts the right to debate and discuss live issues
like such as opinions that are related to morality, religion, the
existence of God, eternity of the soul, the authority of conscience;
.....and furthermore, secularism does not believe in the second life (life
after death). It affirms, however, that the goodness that exists in this
life is true and looking for it is a good thing in itself.
Secularism aims to discover the material conditions that
through which man can through it falls into poverty and deprivation. It
also confirms the existence of material factors in this life, and that
ignoring them leads to insanity and harm, therefore, it is necessary for
people to hold fast to such factors.
Secularism does not fight the axioms of Christianity, nor does
it ascribe guidance and light to nature. Nonetheless, it sees guidance
and light in the secular truth that emerges independent of (any
religion) and endures as such forever."
From these definitions, we can reach arrive at the following
points in defining secularism:
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1 – Social conducts and moral levels aside from religion;
2 – life on earth can be explained away from the unseen;
3 – The real goodness is in this life and looking for it is good
in itself; and
4 – There is guidance and light in the secular truth which
endures forever.
Is it fair to classify religion in the panel of forbidden fruits of
social gathering?
The Ummah and the erection of civilization:
The role of the Muslim Ummah in the erection of civilization
is considered the most profound of the three values of the political,
cultural cognitive, and social systems; for in any human gathering
there, must exist a system as a framework within which all these three
values interact.
The French orientalist M. Boizarin, discussing the idea of the
Islamic Ummah and whether it is different from the nation in the
West, says: "The idea of Ummah in the Islamic traditions has no
equivalent in the West or in the Western historical experience. The
Islamic nation is a gathering of the believers who are tied to each
other by religious, and political ties at the same time and revolving
around the holy word of God... A believer relates to this community
by his own individual word of sincerity called the Uttering of
Shahadatein (bearing witness that there is no God but Allah and
Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah) which makes him equal to all
other Muslims. The outspoken word as well as a Muslim's intention
are the only two Islamic conditions with which any individual can join
the Muslim community; thus, joining the Islamic Ummah begins the
by the worship of, accompanied by all the obligations towards, Allah".
On defining the Ummah from the perspective of civilization,
we choose this definition: "a group that believes in one creed of from
which a system to organize its affairs and its problems arises".
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Consequently, the concept of Ummah in Islam is closely
connected to its vision of the universe – the Islamic vision – where
monotheism is considered to be the angular angle stone or the
backbone. The concept also connects the Ummah also with its
Istikhlaf (succession) function on earth.
This dialectical relationship between the Ummah and the belief
of Islam distinguishes this Ummah and guarantees its continuity and
endurance in doing carrying out its mission on earth where the fate of
the Ummah cannot be separated from the path of Islam or from the
call of Islam... , and every strength of the Islamic Ummah strengthens
the path of the Islamic creed. The call and the creed are intertwined
and the first renovating renovate sand refurbishing refurbishes the
Ummah at all times.
From the standpoint of Shar'iah, the middle (wassat) Ummah
of Islam is the nation of tolerance and moderation. From the cognitive
standpoint, it is the nation of leadership which is endowed with
especially highly polarized aptitudes and capabilities that result in
dual effects: internal coherence and external attraction to others as
well as a melting pot and a point of radiation and a center for
gathering and containing (others). It is, therefore, everlasting until the
day of judgment, unfettered by any historic or relativity laws, as its
mainstay is the Will of God.
He finally concludes by arguing that the Qur'anic Ummah will
endure as long as the Qur'an is there; its ineffectiveness does not wipe
out or refute its existence.
The Ummah in the Islam is an historical and a social reality. It
shares with other groups, or nations, its interactions with all
surroundings, but it differs from other nations in the limits of such an
interactions: especially in the light of dissimilarity in formation and in
goals. Dissimilarity in the formation of the Muslim Ummah led to its
endurance and flourishing,; thereby allowing a distinctive group to
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evolve based on a special kind of socialization that results in a unique
group or a unique Ummah with different characteristics.
As for the relationship between the individual and the group,
the Ummah is psychological reality living within the individual first,
and a systemic reality as an extension to of this psychological
manifestation.
As an historical reality, it depends on some circumstantial
conditions (relating to time and place) that allows the transformation
of efforts and energies latent in the group conscience consciousness
into a formidable conscious systemic force.
Amongst all ideas that presented a complete picture of man's
comings and goings on earth, Al-Islam achieved its goals with the
help of man not at the his expense, of him as it did not permit the
existence of political, economic, or philosophical idols for so that man
to could offer himself on their altar, nor did it destroy man's Fetrah in
order to achieve more progress.
We can learn multiple lessons from this Western philosophical
experience, however,: for example, the idea of conflict led to a
peculiar relationship between man and the environment over which he
attempted to take control, away from any moral framework. This was
capable of adversely affecting many of the existing balances in nature,
and, finally, man had to finds himself in confronting of an
insurmountable environmental problem which can be explained only
in the absence of any moral framework for his relationship with
nature.
Islam, .on the other hand, put nature with all its elements under
the authority of its moral code, wherein the concept of Taskheer
(subjecting everything to man's service on earth) played a role in the
relationship of Muslims with nature: since Allah subjugated it to man's
needs, the idea of conquering or dominating nature disappeared in
Muslims' parlance.
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Besides, the Western experience provides us with yet another
important lesson: that of the high price man has to pay if he attaches
himself to the worship of achieving progress. The current insoluble
crises that the Western individual and family are suffering from,
which could be considered a price they pay for their clinging to
progress, prove that the success of any system should not be attained
at man's expense.
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Section 4
Civilization and Concept Building
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Chapter 1
The 'Other' in the Islamic Perception of
Civilization
The 'culture' of accepting others has proposed imposed itself
strongly on the human culture during the past few decades, and then it
spared up to the level of confrontation during the last few years. This
offshoot of the main 'culture', however, was not to take would not
have taken root had it not been for the existence of some serious
studies which contributed tremendously participated into moving the
direction of human history in the past five centuries following the
division of the Americas and Australasia among the big colonial
powers.
As humanity began its struggles over land and resources and
over diffusing the main values of each nation, 'Ummah', as the one
representing civilization, the 'culture' of the other' underwent a
systematic process of deracination, after being been assigned all kinds
of negative features, and each nation endeavored to be self-centered
itself around some distinctive insignia: be that a religion, a sect, a
nationality, or a language... present, and thereby isolate, itself,
considering any nation that did not share such an insignia as the
'other'.
There are several approaches to discussing the culture of
accepting the 'other':
1 – Either to know the linguistic meaning of these three words:
(culture – rejection – the other,) and all about them in the original
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available resources (most of which are Western resources, by the way)
and to start assuming that we will be guests of another culture.
The best that we can do in such a case is find some formal
similarities and dissimilarities that lead to unproductive and arid
conclusions; for writings vary between critiques, biased analyses,
satirical fabrication and concoction, and formal unfruitful academic
issues debates, without reaching any useful outcome. Or
2 – to let the shadows of oppression, the repression and the
subjugation that we have sustained at the hands of the different
Western powers cloud our vision of reality, and blame everything on
everything on Western conspiracies; thereby closing the doors of
discussion a priori and relieving ourselves from of the need any
painstaking of thinking; Or
3 – To discuss the concept from a religious and Shar'iah-bound
start foundation; thereby placing everything the West has in its right
place, as we have chosen to do, without any belittling or exaggerating:
i.e. to place the Western experience in its right historical and cultural
contexts as expressions of a certain part of the world, since the culture
of accepting the 'other' is not a Western product, even though if the
West was the first to formulate the term as it currently exists.
I am better than he is:
The case of the 'other' was one of the earliest scenes when
Allah created Adam (peace be upon Him).; as Allah (exalted be His
name) informed the angels that was about to create a 'successor' on
earth, He said:
"And when thy Lord said to the angels: ‗I am about to place a
vicegerent in the earth,‘ they said: ‗Wilt Thou place therein such as
will cause disorder in it, and shed blood? — and we glorify Thee with
Thy praise and extol Thy holiness.‘ He answered: ‗I know what you
know not.‘ And when thy Lord said to the angels: ‗I am about to place
a vicegerent in the earth,‘ they said: ‗Wilt Thou place therein such as
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will cause disorder in it, and shed blood? — and we glorify Thee with
Thy praise and extol Thy holiness.‘ He answered: ‗I know what you
know not.‘ And He taught Adam all the names, then He put the
objects of these names before the angels and said: ‗Tell Me the names
of these, if you are right.‘ They said: ‗Holy art Thou! No knowledge
have we except what Thou hast taught us; surely, Thou art the AllKnowing, the Wise.‘ He said: ‗O Adam, tell them their names;‘ and
when he had told them their names, He said: ‗Did I not say to you, I
know the secrets of the heavens and of the earth, and I know what you
reveal and what you conceal?‘ And remember the time when We said
to the angels: ‗Submit to Adam,‘ and they all submitted. But Satan
(Iblis) did not. He refused and was too proud; and he was of the
disbelievers".
The successor mentioned in the holy verses was 'the other' or
the newcomer to a world where only two types of creation existed: the
angels, whose nature is not to err as they always obey Allah and never
challenge His will; and the Jinn, who are given the choice to obey or
disobey God. Allah (exalted be His name) says:
"And REMEMBER THE TIME when We said to the angels,
‗Submit to Adam,‘ and they ALL submitted, except Satan (Iblis). He
was ONE of the Jinn; and he disobeyed the command of his Lord.
Will you then take him and his offspring for friends instead of Me
while they are your enemies? Evil is the exchange for the
wrongdoers".( )
Thus, Satan (Iblis), being one of the Jinn that was were created
before Adam, wanted to be himself and his descendants to be the sole
potential heirs of Paradise. He was without any competitors among
God's angels and Allah made an exception of him and informed us
that he was one of the Jinn.
The idea of 'a possible competitor' reveals an exciting
connection between rejecting the 'other' on the one hand, and the two
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cultures of despotism and denouncing denunciation of competition on
the other hand.
Denouncing (or rebelling against) competition here is a
reflection of yet another reality central to the idea of rejecting the
'other' (we will see it later): arrogance!
A person inflicted with the sickness of arrogance sees himself
as always deserving the first highest position by virtue of his
perception of himself, not of his success in an exam for example or
any other virtue. Believing in retribution, accountability, Hell and
paradise... is a common denominator among all Heavenly religions.
Because of his desire to stay in Paradise forever, he (Satan
(Iblis)) refused to prostrate to Adam. His refusal, aside from being in
itself an act of disobedience to God, it was also the first sign of
rejecting the 'other'.
Therefore, the problem of rejecting the 'other' is not a byproduct of our time. It is a universal problem dating back to the
creation of Adam (peace be upon Him), nor is it only a cultural
problem, even if it is closely related to culture. It is not a political
problem either; even though it has dangerous political consequences.
When Satan (Iblis) refused (to prostrate to Adam), he justified
his refusal by saying that he was better than Adam: Allah)(exalted be
His name) addressing the offspring of Adam says:
"And We did create you AND then We gave you shape; then
said We to the angels, ‗Submit to Adam;‘ and they ALL submitted but
Satan (Iblis) DID NOT; he would not be of those who submit. God
said, ‗What prevented thee from submitting when I commanded thee?‘
He said, ‗I am better than he. Thou hast created me of fire while him
hast Thou created of clay.‘ God said, ‗Then go down hence; it is not
for thee to be arrogant here. Get out; thou art certainly of those who
are abased".
In another Surah, Allah said:
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"And he said, ‗What think Thou? CAN this whom Thou hast
honored above me BE MY SUPERIOR? If Thou wilt grant me respite
till the Day of Resurrection, I will most surely bring his descendants
under my sway except a few".
Satan (Iblis)' motive was only the fact that Adam was dignified
and venerated by Allah. God's regard being the object of the
competition, Satan (Iblis), instead of trying to get that win regard
through worship and submission to the Will of God, he tried to
challenge that Will, declaring that he will be an adamant and obstinate
enemy to Adam and his offspring.; Extending his animosity to all
descendants of this newcomer (Adam), even though they were not part
of the scene (of creation and the dialogue that ensued), is another
generalization to which Satan (Iblis) was driven only by arrogance,
and a different story from that of the original sin as related in
Christianity: something that will have an echo later.
In another Surah (Surah Sad), the verses reveal more of the
important lessons and indications of the story of the arrogance of
Satan (Iblis). God (exalted be His name) said:
"When thy Lord said to the angels, ‗I am about to create man
from clay, ‗And so when I have fashioned him in perfection, and have
breathed into him of My Spirit, fall ye down in submission to him.‘ So
the angels submitted, all of them together. But Satan (Iblis) did not.
He behaved proudly, and was of those who disbelieved. God said, ‗O
Satan (Iblis), what hindered thee from submitting to what I had
created with My two hands? Is it that thou art too proud or art thou
really of the exalted ones?‘ He said, ‗I am better than he. Thou hast
created me of fire and him hast Thou created of clay.‘ God said, ‗Then
get out hence, for, surely thou art rejected. ‗And surely on thee shall
be my curse till the Day of Judgment.‘ He said, ‗My Lord, then grant
me respite till the day when they shall be raised.‘ God said, ‗Certainly
thou art of those that are granted respite, ‗Till the day of the appointed
time.‘ He said, ‗So by Thy might, I will surely lead them all astray".
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It is worth noting that God (exalted be His name) in His
dialogue with Satan (Iblis) did not ascribe to Adam any privilege
except that He created him by His own hands.
Satan (Iblis)' refusal to prostrate to Adam was actually a
rebellion against God (the Creator) and not against Adam (the
created). It is apparent from the composition of the Arabic sentence
that Allah ordered the angels to prostrate to Adam the moment of his
creation and before Adam was able to do anything good to make him
deserving the dignity of God, or anything bad to earn him the
animosity of Satan (Iblis).
It was a plain command by God who honored Adam via
creating him by His own hands, and Allah did not say categorically
that it was arrogance behind the position taken by Satan (Iblis), but He
(exalted be His name) asked Satan (Iblis): "Is it that thou art too proud
or art thou really of the exalted ones?".
Al-'Aqqad recounted that demonizing is composed of these
characteristics: arrogance, disobedience, envy, hatred, falsehood, and
deception.
Arrogance is incommensurate (out of line) with the status of
God; envy is denying God's blessings and an objection to His Will;
hatred ,though it could be practiced sometimes by those who are really
good, – when it is directed towards a human being, – but when it is the
essence of their whole nature, it becomes very destructive as it
diametrically contradicts the love and the blessings of God; and
falsehood and deception are contrary to truthfulness and against
straightforwardness, i. e. against all mankind.
Here we must ponder over the following:
1 – This was the first event in which the creation was divided,
with each side barricading itself between around a central point: Satan
(Iblis) around the "I" (you created me; thereby putting a barrier
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between himself and Adam); and the "He" (you created him meaning
Adam).
2 – Satan (Iblis) refused to prostrate to Adam and justified his
refusal by stating that he was better than Adam;
3 – Satan (Iblis) thought that he was better than Adam by
virtue of his own creation from a different substance thant that of
which Adam was created.
4 – The claim Satan (Iblis)' claim means that substances are
degrees, with Fire fire maintaining being the highest degree; thereby
implying that clay is less than fire, which is a contention that lacks
proof or evidence;
5 – God himself passed a judgment on Satan (Iblis), describing
him as arrogant, and dismissed him out of Paradise;
6 – Satan (Iblis), relying on the nature of the stuff out of which
he was created – (a matter decided only by God), – disobeyed God,
since he did not choose to be created out of fire, nor did Adam choose
clay.
7 – The logic chosen by Satan (Iblis) leads naturally to
'arrogance'; for anyone who is created from a stuff that is in itself
better than that of anybody else, does not need to do good or to avoid
evil deeds, since the goodness resides in his innate self.
In the following scene, arrogance manifests itself as the most
dangerous elements of the culture of rejecting the 'other' appears: that
of attempting to destroy the 'other', or to make him go astray in order
to achieve salvation only to for oneself.
When Satan (Iblis) refused to prostrate to Adam and God
dismissed him out of Paradise, he did not show compunction, regret or
utter any word of repentance, nor did he think of what can he could do
to remedy his fault in the sight of Allah and pull extract himself from
out of the wrath of God. Instead, he sought an objective of depriveing
his opponent, 'the other', from Paradise; i.e. taking leading the 'other'
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to an astray path became more important to him than seeking
salvation.
The Qur'an cited states:
"He said: ‗Now, since Thou hast adjudged me as lost, I will
assuredly lie in wait for them on Thy straight path‘".( )
In Surah Al-Hijr: "He answered, ‗My Lord, since Thou hast
adjudged me as lost, I will surely make evil appear beautiful to them
on the earth, and I will surely lead them all astray‘".
In Surah Sad:
"He said, ‗So by Thy might, I will surely lead them all
astray‘".
Satan (Iblis) here rejects the choice of competition choice and
sides with the choice of seduction: the first basis of a logic known
later on as Machiavellianism's; since the rejection here goes to based
on a logical criterion that can be reasonably proven and accepted. The
seduction choice of seduction is the true start foundation of the logic
laid down by extremist secularism later on as it separated morals from
the rest of human activity.
In Surah Al-Israa:
"And he said, ‗What think Thou? Can this whom Thou hast
honored above me be my superior? If Thou wilt grant me respite till
the Day of Resurrection, I will most surely bring his descendants
under my sway except a few‘".( )
And in Surah Al-Nisaa,
"And assuredly I will lead them astray and assuredly I will
excite in them vain desires, and assuredly I will incite them and they
will cut the ears of cattle; and assuredly I will incite them and they
will alter Allah‘s creation.‘ And he who takes Satan for a friend beside
Allah has certainly suffered a manifest loss".
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Though Satan (Iblis), as it seemed, was involved in a dialogue
with Allah, he in fact was moving from dialogue to declaring war on
'the successor' chosen by Allah. Indeed, not any of his speech which
resembling a dialogue deserves to be described as such!!
Thus, the Satan became an enemy of mankind without any
provocation on the part of the human being. Allah declared:
"verily, Satan is to you an open foe?".
"for Satan is to man an open enemy".
"Surely, Satan is an open enemy to man".
"Surely Satan is an enemy to you; so him as an enemy".
"And let not Satan hinder you. Surely, he is to you an open
enemy".
"Did I not enjoin on you, O ye sons of Adam, that you worship
not Satan — for he is to you an open enemy".
This kind of animosity, stressed by the Qur'an, has become,
regrettably, a concept that goes largely unnoticed to a greater degree;
especially after since many much modern thoughts thinking and ideas
philosophy has came to make see this animosity as only among
humans, which is built often based on ethnicity, racial, class, or
ideological bases.
This has been propagated by as a consequence of the fact that
man has been separated from his divine origin; thereby transforming
the devil from being a reality into being only a symbol, and separating
human activities from morality.
This analysis reveals a lot of the important facts that enlighten
our way as we proceed to study the culture of accepting the 'other'.
The classification problem:
One of the most important methodological problems included
in the story of Adam and Satan (Iblis) is the issue of classification of
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the existing objects in the universe. The idea of a hierarchy among the
existing objects in the world (as in the case of clay and fire) is the
'theoretical basis' on which ancient and modern racial cultures arose:
they all supposed the existence of some kind of hierarchy among the
objects, without any proof.
They all supposed that pre-eminence or advantage is either
deterministic or inherited, and that it is tied up to belonging to a
certain race, ethnicity, a color, .. i.e. to something that humans have no
control over, nor can they attain by their efforts and endeavors.
Tying goodness up to what man cannot attain constitutes a
hostile stand against a well-established rule in all Heavenly religions:
for pre-eminence or advantage should always be in arise from what
man can attain, such as belief, piety and, good deeds,... and
consequently, the types of closed social and political organization
which are centered around race in the nationalist thinking ought, or
class in the Marxist thought, as well as centering around ethnicity,
..these all these types would be barren grounds, not fit for the
cultivation of any culture in which the 'other' could be accepted.
Getting rid of the 'other':
One of the most dangerous consequences that result from the
culture of not accepting the 'other', is to deny him the right to be
honored by God; thereby violating him and his privacies just because
he is the 'other'.
We will come to this point later, when we discuss "the culture
of refusing the other" in different times and ages. The diffusion of the
material origin of mankind, and denying the idea of creation
altogether, paved the way for the propagation of the uprooting ideas of
all types and forms.
Creating (man) cannot be separated from (his) respect and
regard, and this which will remains a barrier in the face of the staunch
inimical ideologies of uprooting which have been growing like an
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epidemic in the contemporary thought following the separation of man
from these two truths of creation and regard.
The first story of denying the other is the story of Adam's two
sons, which is narrated by Allah (exalted be his name) in the Qur'an as
follows:
"And relate to them truly the story of the two sons of Adam,
when they EACH offered an offering, and it was accepted from one of
them and was not accepted from the other. The latter said, ‗I will
surely kill thee.‘ The former replied, ‗Allah accepts only from the
righteous. ‗If thou stretch out thy hand against me to kill me, I am not
going to stretch out my hand against thee to kill thee. I do fear Allah,
the Lord of the universe. ‗I wish that thou should bear my sin as well
as thy sin, and thus be among the inmates of the Fire, and that is the
reward of those who do wrong.‘ But his mind induced him to kill his
brother, so he killed him and became one of the losers. Then Allah
sent a raven which scratched in the ground, that He might show him
how to hide the corpse of his brother. He said, ‗Woe is me! Am I not
able to be even like this raven so that I may hide the corpse of my
brother?‘ And then he became regretful".
The story, away from the interpretations and justifications
given by religious scholars, is a story of struggling over pre-eminence;
exactly as was the case has been between Adam and Satan (Iblis). In
the story of the two sons of Adam, each of them introduced an
offering to God; the acceptance of one's offering by God is an
indication he that one is pious before God, as the verses reveal show:
"Allah accepts only from the righteous", which meant that he whose
offering is not accepted, was not merely refusing the pre-eminence of
his brother (the other) but was in fact refusing one of the laws of God,
which attach goodness to piety. He was seeing himself better than his
brother; thereby deserving pre-eminence regardless of his share of
piety.
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The killer son, as indicated in the Qur'an, did not accept the
logic of competition (".... for this let the aspirants aspire"). On which
any pre-eminence is attained in all Heavenly religions. The one who is
afflicted by the sickness of refusing the 'other' always repeats the fault
of Satan (Iblis), who wanted to be the only candidate for pre-eminence
and regard in the sight of God.
In the story of Adam's two sons, the killer son imagined that he
could attain that regard by getting rid of the 'other'; thereby providing
a basis for the first murder in the history of mankind.
Likewise, the story of the fellows of the Trench is perhaps the
most crucial as narrated by Allah in the Qur'an. The story bears the
hallmark of persecution which echoes the rejection of the 'other' at the
group level, and illustrates .
The fellows of the Trench includes belief being surrounded by
atheism and infidelity which attempted to suffocate the believers.
By the same token, when Prophet Lot wanted to change the
bad habits of his people who were afflicted by homosexuality, he
politely argued with them, but his arguments were rebutted not by
another countering argument, but by trying to get rid of him:
"And remember Lot, when he said to his people, ‗Do you
commit abomination while you see the evil thereof? What! do you
approach men lustfully rather than women? Nay, you are indeed an
ignorant people.‘ But the answer of his people was naught save that
they said, ‗Drive out Lot‘s family from your city. They are a people
who would keep clean".
Imam El-Shatibi,( ), in his work "Al-I'etisam", proved that the
prevailing current could be translated into an authorities repression
that could even be even more coercive than the political authority;
especially when the compass deviates from the criterion to the
customary.
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Moreover, the sickness of refusing the 'other', as indicated in
the story of prophet Lot, is a story of arrogance and haughtiness. All
nations afflicted by this disease, turned to the 'other' with persecution
and torture with of all varying degrees to the end of culminating in
annihilation.
However, power has never been heavier in the sight of God
than the truth; here the prophet Lot (peace be upon Him), despite his
trust in God's victory, and expressing his sadness, acknowledged that
his enemies were stronger than he was, in as far as the material
strength was concerned, He screamed:
"He said, ‗Would that I had power to deal with you, or I should
betake myself to a mighty support for shelter‘".( )
The 'Other' as a moral issue:
One of the approaches to the issue of accepting or rejecting the
'other' is to treat it as a moral issue: as the relationship between the
human beings – individuals or a groups – does necessarily include an
implicit or explicit moral choice. This can best be understood in the
light of what can be called "the Moral Theory of Heavenly Religions",
which considers this 'other' as an object for guidance not a target for
extermination.
However, On the other hand, and particularly in Islam – this
final message from God to mankind – which brought brings up its
adherents first according to their relationship to God, and then
according to their visions of themselves and to their mission on earth
and their place in the universe; thereby warning them against
arrogance and haughtiness, which Islam considered considers a
sickness that deprives anyone inflicted by it from entering into
Paradise.
This means that Islam endows man with the psychological and
mental health that makes his entire life full of humbleness in thinking
and in conduct.
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Al-Imam Al-Bukhari narrated that Ibn Mas'ood quoted prophet
Mohammed (peace be upon Him) as saying: "Is not permitted to enter
into Paradise anyone who has in his heart an atom of arrogance".
A man (of the audience) said: "‗anyone of us likes to see his
garment and his shoes clean and beautiful‘... the prophet answered
him by saying: "‗Allah is beautiful and He likes beauty but arrogance
is rejecting the truth and vilification of people‘".
Based on its stand on the issue of right, the Anglo-Sacsonian
has developed what tentatively could be tantamount to a quasi-theory
called the 'moral environment'; "where freedom relies on another
factor in the moral environment".
"Whoever is unable to control his own private feelings and
passions, would not be able to do so in their public life. During their
entire life, people need to train themselves on in developing habits of
courage, humbleness, and self-composure, poise and other virtues that
help them quietly reach decisions that they could defend under stress.
practicing freedom should be protected by an honest guardian, i.e. by
the right customs and traditions".
When the surrounding community helps in performing this
difficult mission, it puts a brake on its members' going too far
(exaggerations).
In our time, families, neighbors, schools, churches, and
religious institutions affect our daily life, especially in our early years,
of age as they form the environment that we live in. When this culture
becomes truth-loving it would will be forthcoming, if that the culture
is otherwise, i.e. bad or rotten culture, or truth-hating, it does not only
makes development just difficult, it also makes success a rarity.
Professor Alan Hertzke was the first to give a documented
presentation of the moral environment as a cultural concept. In his
article, "tTheory of moral environment", he reminds us of the
precipice which stands is in front of anyone who attempts to repeat a
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certain immoral behavior that leads to deterioration of the conduct of
humanity as a whole.
This deterioration makes it difficult to make the right
decisions, and necessitates the shouldering of certain burdens and
costs. And indeed, some forms of such a moral deterioration or
degradation may be agreed upon accepted or even unanimously
consented to.
This concept of "truth-hating society" which has been recently
formulated was outlined in the Holy Qur'an in its reference to the
disbelievers of Quraish as an example of the bitter fruits of the ethics
of arrogance which results only in truth-hating society: a society that
prefers death to truth!!
Allah (exalted be His name) said:
"And remember the time when they said, ‗O Allah, if this be
indeed the truth from Thee, then rain down upon us stones from
heaven or bring down upon us a grievous punishment."
Albany, in his correct series (Hadith No. 541), narrated that the
prophet (peace be upon Him) reported that Allah said: "Pride is my
robe and Al-Ezzatu (true Honor) is my dress... whoever contests with
me on any of these, I will throw him into Hellfire".
Since absolute Pride belongs to Allah, arrogance appears to be
contesting with Allah by claiming some of His own Holy
Characteristics. All civilizations at all times and ages, that refused the
'other', as we shall see, committed that sin of contesting with Allah,;
thereby attributing to themselves – individuals, groups, and cultures –
characteristics and traits that belong only to God.
Albany has also narrated (in his correct series Hadith No.
2785), that the Prophet (peace be upon Him) said: "Shall enter into
Paradise whoever dies while he is not guilty of three: arrogance, debt
and stealing", and (in Hadith No. 1741) said: "People of Hellfire are
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every arrogant, naughty and self-conceited, while the people of
Paradise are the meek, the weak, and the humble".
The problem of getting rid of the 'Other':
As recently as the appearance of the centralcentralized nationstate, humanity came to know of the problem of systematic and
planned getting rid extermination of the 'other', who could be different
ethnically. linguistically, religion-wise, or race- wiseially.
The Nazi Holocaust (against all non-Germans, Jewish, polish,
Arab, Gypsies, Slavic Slavs.....) represents the peak nadir of such a
tragedy. The phenomenon is older than this, even if though the
concept may have come to the forefront more recently.
In the story of prophet Joseph (peace be upon Him) we may
find an early example of this problem of getting rid of the 'other'. In
the culture of refusing the 'other', a crime of desecration is often
committed against the 'other' because the offender sees him as the
cause of depriving him from of pre-eminence and regard.
When he, who is refusing the 'other', becomes unable to
deservedly attain the position of regard and pre-eminence, he begins
to think that getting rid of the 'other' helps him achieve exactly that.
The final scene in the story of Joseph may be the best prologue to the
story, because; as the prophet of Allah (Joseph) ascribed what
happened between him and his half-brothers to the devil, the thing
which reminds us of that it was the devil who was the first to
inaugurates the culture of refusing the 'other'.
Allah (exalted be His name) said:
"And he raised his parents upon the throne, and they all fell
down prostrate before God for him. And he said, ‗O my father, this is
the fulfillment of my dream of old. My Lord has made it true. And He
bestowed a favor upon me when He took me out of the prison and
brought you from the desert after Satan had stirred up discord between
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me and my brethren. Surely, my Lord is Benignant to whomsoever He
pleases; for He is the All-Knowing, the Wise."
Returning to the story itself, we find that prophet Joseph
(peace be upon Him) was venerated by Allah and that his father used
to warn him against making that known to his brothers for fear that
they might conspire against him. Once again, we find the devil present
in that story., Allah (exalted be His name) said:
"Remember the time when Joseph said to his father, ‗O my
father, I saw in a dream eleven stars and the sun and the moon, I saw
them making obeisance to me.‘ He said, ‗O my darling son, relate not
thy dream to thy brothers, lest they contrive a plot against thee; for
Satan is to man an open enemy. ‗And thus shall it be as thou hast seen,
thy Lord will choose thee and teach thee the interpretation of things
and perfect His favor upon thee and upon the family of Jacob as He
perfected it upon two of thy forefathers — Abraham and Isaac. Verily,
thy Lord is All-Knowing, Wise.‘ Surely, in Joseph and his brethren
there are Signs for the inquirers. When they said, ‗Verily, Joseph and
his brother are dearer to our father than we are, although we are a
strong party. Surely, our father is in manifest error.‘ ‗Kill Joseph or
cast him out to some distant land, so that your father‘s favor may
become exclusively yours and you can thereafter become a righteous
people".
In that model of refusing the 'other', a lot deserves
contemplation:
•
1 – Prophet Jacob (peace be upon Him) fearing the
devil's method of rejecting the 'other' and denying his regard and preeminence, expected that Joseph's half-brothers might scheme against
Him.
•
2 – Joseph's half-brothers did not see in Jacob's love for
Joseph and they did not feel ashamed to let their feelings be known
about that;
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•
3 – exactly as Satan (Iblis) thought that his creation out
from fire gave him pre-eminence over Adam (something that is
incredibly unreasonable as based on arrogance and selfishness),
Joseph's half-brothers thought of themselves as better than Him and
that they – not Him – deserved their father's love (something also that
cannot be reasonably justified).
•
4 – Joseph's half-brothers did not think of ways to earn
pre-eminence in the sight of their father, they thought of getting rid of
Joseph instead: thereby attaining goodness and the love of their father.
This indicates that the culture of refusing the 'other' is never
devoid of aberrations justified by the devil and rejected by the Fetrah
and by reasoning.
Violation as a Universal Code:
In the culture of refusing the 'other', the 'other' becomes the
object of total and unrestricted violation, which includes immorally
deceiving him and leading him astray. In the story of Adam and Satan
(Iblis), Allah (exalted be His name) issued a law for Adam to live by.,
He said:
"And We said: ‗O Adam, dwell thou and thy wife in the
garden, and eat there from plentifully wherever you will, but approach
not this tree, lest you be of the wrongdoers.‘ But Satan caused them
both to slip by means of it and drove them out of the state in which
they were. And We said: ‗Go forth; some of you are enemies of
others, and for you there is an abode in the earth and a provision for a
time‘".
And in Surah Al-A'araf, Allah tells us more details about that
devilish method in dealing with the 'other' according to the general
rule of violation.
He (exalted be his name) said:
"And We have established you in the earth and provided for
you therein the means of subsistence. How little thanks you give! And
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We did create you and then We gave you shape; then said We to the
angels, ‗Submit to Adam;‘; and they all submitted but Satan (Iblis) did
not; he would not be of those who submit. God said, ‗What prevented
thee from submitting when I commanded thee?‘ He said, ‗I am better
than he. Thou hast created me of fire while him hast Thou created of
clay.‘ God said, ‗Then go down hence; it is not for thee to be arrogant
here. Get out; thou art certainly of those who are abased.‘ He said,
‗Grant me respite till the day when they will be raised up.‘ God said,
‗Thou shalt be of those who are given respite.‘ He said: ‗Now, since
Thou hast adjudged me as lost, I will assuredly lie in wait for them on
Thy straight path. ‗Then will I surely come upon them from before
them and from behind them and from their right and from their left,
and Thou wilt not find most of them to be grateful.‘ God said: ‗Get
out hence, despised and banished. Whosoever of them shall follow
thee, I will surely fill Hell with you all.‘ ‗And O Adam, dwell thou
and thy wife in the garden and eat there from wherever you will, but
approach not this tree lest you be among the wrongdoers.‘ But Satan
whispered evil suggestions to them so that he might make known to
them what was hidden from them of their shame, and said, ‗Your Lord
has only forbidden you this tree, lest you should become angels or
such beings as live forever.‘ And he swore to them, saying, ‗Surely, I
am a sincere counselor unto you.‘ So he caused them to fall into
disobedience by deceit. And when they tasted of the tree, their shame
became manifest to them and they began to stick the leaves of the
garden together over themselves. And their Lord called them, saying,
‗Did I not forbid you that tree and tell you: verily, Satan is to you an
open foe?"
Allah (exalted be His name) poured his wrath on arrogant
Satan (Iblis), who did not ask for anything except for a 'chance to
challenge'. "Grant me respite till the day when they will be raised up".
Thus, he did not ask for a respite that he may repent and return
to God, or to prove that he can do good deeds and do extremely well
to be better than Adam. .. Instead, he made his main preoccupation to
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prove that Adam did not deserve any regard or pre-eminence in the
sight of God, "I will assuredly lie in wait for them on Thy straight
path", or, clearly put, instead of following the right path, I will lead,
lure and tempt the 'other' to the path of evil.
The Qur'anic verses continue to disclose this immoral method
applied by Satan (Iblis)., Allah (exalted be His name) said:
''....and Satan has made their works LOOK beautiful to them....",(
),with reference to the story of the queen of Sheba;, and in Surah AlAnkabut (the Spider), he He (exalted be His name) said:
"And We destroyed ‗Ad and Thamud; and it is evident to you
from their dwelling-places. And Satan made their deeds appear good
to them, and thus turned them away from the path, sagacious though
they were".
He (exalted be His name) has also said:
"And when Satan made their deeds seem fair to them and said,
‗None among men shall prevail against you this day, and I am your
protector.‘"
It is the culture of arrogance and self-conceit, and nothing else.
The devil always beautifies things to his followers.
The Qur'an also refers to the siege imposed by Satan (Iblis) on
Adam and his offspring since the day God created Adam till until the
day of resurrection:, , as Allah (exalted be His name) he says:
"Then will I surely come upon them from before them and
from behind them and from their right and from their left...."
And in order to see Adam falling into his trap, Satan (Iblis)
started his fight with the tool of whispering: Allah (exalted be His
name) said:
"But Satan whispered evil suggestions to them so that he might
make known to them what was hidden from them of their shame, and
said, ‗Your Lord has only forbidden you this tree, lest you should
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become angels or such beings as live forever.‘ And he swore to them,
saying, ‗Surely, I am a sincere counselor unto you."
Thus, calling using his trick of whispering guidance and
counsel,; thereby tempting Adam and his wife to follow him,
believing that he was caring for their eternal life like that of the
angels.
All of these tricks (followed by Satan (Iblis)) relate to the
culture of refusing the 'other' in its modern image as we currently
understand it.
In Surah Al-Israa, Satan (Iblis), as narrated in the Qur'an, said:
"And he said, ‗What think Thou? Can this whom Thou hast
honored above me be my superior? If Thou wilt grant me respite till
the Day of Resurrection, I will most surely bring his descendants
under my sway except a few."( )
This means that Satan (Iblis) swore to lead mankind astray;
and the Arabic language attests to his determination to do so. That the
devil is able to lead certain people astray is recorded in the Qur'an as a
matter of fact; delineating the main traits which are similar to the
devil's traits, and they never side with the truth but always they side
with falsehood and are on be on the wrong side,. even on the day of
judgment, when they try to lie in front of Allah:
"...and they swear to falsehood knowingly.... They have made
their oaths a screen for their misdeeds, and they turn men away from
the path of Allah ... On the day when Allah will raise them all
together, they will swear to Him even as they swear to you, and they
will think that they have something to stand upon. Now surely it is
they who are the liars.... Satan has gained mastery over them, and has
made them forget the remembrance of Allah. They are Satan‘s party.
Now surely it is Satan‘s party that are the losers".
Political totalitarianism played a tremendous role in
dominating and controlling people and placing them under a
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suffocating siege with the use of political and, economic tools
disguised behind nationalistic or enlightening slogans and with the use
of a totalitarian apparatus that produces everything from goods to
human dreams.
The picture, here, resembles that drawn by the Qur'an about
what Satan (Iblis) called counsel. Allah named it 'aberration and
leading people astray'. It is, indeed, one of the political clarifications
of the concepts of acquisitions and grabbing that Satan (Iblis) has
threatened to do.
Thus, the following traits could be construed as characteristics
of the culture of refusing the 'other':
1 – It is a culture of selfish acquisition of goodness;
2 – It attaches the goodness to something that cannot be
attained through one's efforts, like the '"I'"; thereby depriving the
'other' of any goodness. In the example of Satan (Iblis), a comparison
was made between fire and clay; i.e. Satan (Iblis) referred to the
substance of which he was made and in which neither he nor Adam
had any choice as it was only the grace of Allah that, determined that
substance of creation.
3 – It is a culture of arrogance; for he who is better by virtue of
his creation does not need to do any good or to avoid evil since
goodness is an innate trait in his origin of creation. In modern cultures,
rejecting the 'other' attaches goodness and pre-eminence to belonging
to a certain culture, or to a certain race or even to a certain color.
4 – It is a culture of hatred: as it attempts to destroy the 'other'
through leading him astray or annihilating him instead of seeking
salvation for oneself.
5 – It a culture of violating the other's sanctity and privacy just
because he is the other.
164
6 – The crime of violation is committed against the 'other', he
the perpetrator believes that getting rid of his opponent reassigns (to
himself) any pre-eminence lost to that opponent.
7 – It is a culture of envy as its aim is to denude one's
opponent of any pre-eminence and regard he might have deservedly
earned or which might have been bequeathed on him by the grace of
God.
8 – the 'other' who is the object of violation could be a Belief
or just plain Fetrah surrounded by disbelief and pressure emanating
from a prevailing trend; like the prophet Lot who wanted to change
the bad habits of his compatriots nationals, the prevailing trend stood
in his face and led them to decide to get rid of him.
9 – It is a culture that considers might a criterion for right.
When arrogance and haughtiness is added, the result would be an
attempt towards hurt the 'other' would be to hurt him; thereby
beginning with mere hurt and ending up with total annihilation, even
though might has never been in the sight of God heavier superior to
that right.
10 – It undeservedly denies the 'other' other any right to
compete and excel himself.
11 – Rejecting the 'other' is usually accompanied by an over
arching abuse that reaches everything; Joseph's half-brothers used to
insulted their father, accusing him of an aberration.
12 – Rejecting the 'other' is not a rational culture: it is an
arbitrary stand. We remember how Satan (Iblis) considered himself
better than Adam; something intolerable being only based on arrogant
motives of selfishness.
13 – The inflicted person with in refusing the 'other', other the
inflicted person believes he is always right: ; Joseph's half-brothers
thought that their consensus was enough to make their position
165
towards their youngest half-brother right; something that could hardly
be reasonable.
14 – It is a culture that is not barricaded founded on acquired
endeavors (religious or moral) aiming towards pre-eminence, but
rather based on reaction towards the other, on the basis that getting rid
of him sets the record straight.
Finally, we refer to the following:
1 – the idea of hierarchy among the objects (as between fire
and clay) is the same idea which is invoked by all bigoted and racial
ancient and modern culture, as they all it always assumes that preeminence is inherited and finds its origin in race, ethnicity, color,
religion or the like, none of which can neither be attained on through
one's own choice.
2 – attaching goodness to anything that cannot be obtained by
one's efforts is inimical to religious standards, which stress that preeminence can only be the result of one's endeavors and good deeds,
such as piety, belief, and alms-giving, ....etc., and consequently, all
types of closed political organizations revolve around race, in the
nationalist thought or class in the Marxist thought...., these types
which constitute barren soil in which the culture of accepting the other
can never grow; let alone thrive.
166
Conclusion
In the holy Qur'an, the speech it is made clear that accepting
the other is based on firm grounds that tolerate all levels of
multiplicity and reveal the universal laws that govern human
congregations, these which are:
1 – The unity of human origin; it is, therefore, not accept a
bleed to differentiate between people just on the basis of being
different or in case of disagreement amongst them. Allah (exalted be
His name) said:
"He created you of one single soul".
2 – That nations are different is both the will of God and a trial
for testing the believers.
Allah (exalted be His name) said:
"And We have revealed unto thee the Book comprising the
truth and fulfilling that which was revealed before it in the Book, and
as a guardian over it. Judge, therefore, between them by what Allah
has revealed, and follow not their evil inclinations, turning away from
the truth which has come to thee. For each of you We prescribed a
clear spiritual Law and a manifest way in secular matters. And if
Allah had enforced His will, He would have made you all one people,
but He wishes to try you by that which He has given you. Vie, then,
with one another in good works. To Allah shall you all return; then
will He inform you of that wherein you differed".
Allah (exalted be His name) has also said:
"And if thy Lord had enforced His will, He would have surely
made mankind one people; but they would not cease to differ".
167
Under the ceiling of this universal code, the differences among
people invite for good deeds and for offer the choice between
guidance and aberration:
Allah (exalted be His name) has also said:
"And if Allah had enforced His will, He would surely have
made you all one people; but He lets go astray him who wishes it, and
guides him who wishes it; and you shall surely be questioned
concerning that which you have been doing".
Besides, in addition to the free will, these differences were
meant to lead to the grace and guidance of Allah: He said:
"And if Allah had so pleased, He could have made them one
people; but He admits into His mercy whomsoever He pleases. And as
for the wrongdoers, they will have no protector and no helper".
3 – That religions are different is also a universal code and part
of the state of multiplicity in the world. Allah (exalted be His name)
said:
Allah (exalted be His name) said:
"Dost thou not see that Allah sends down water from the sky
and We bring forth therewith fruits of different colors; and among the
mountains are streaks white and red, of diverse hues and others raven
black; And of men and beasts and cattle, in like manner, there are
various colors? Only those of His servants who possess knowledge
fear Allah. Verily, Allah is Mighty, Most Forgiving".
4 – This human multiplicity came after the oneness of
mankind; a solid ground for equality of mankind as we all are the
offspring of one man (Adam), we all were one nation that got divided.
Allah (exalted be His name) said:
"Mankind were one community, then they differed among
themselves, so Allah raised Prophets as bearers of good tidings and as
warners, and sent down with them the Book containing the truth that
168
He might judge between the people wherein they differed. But now
they began to differ about the Book, and none differed about it except
those to whom it was given, after clear Signs had come to them, out of
envy towards one another. Now has Allah, by His command, guided
the believers to the truth in regard to which they (the unbelievers)
differed; and Allah guides whomsoever He pleases to the right path".
Allah (exalted be His name) also says:
"And mankind were but one community, then they differed
among themselves; and had it not been for a word that had gone
before from thy Lord, it would have already been judged between
them concerning that in which they differed".
Allah (exalted be His name) also says:
"And if thy Lord had enforced His will, surely, all who are on
the earth would have believed together. Wilt thou, then, force men to
become believers?".
5 – The Quran stresses the unity of man's origin with regard to
the substance, the process of creation and the Fetrah.
Allah (exalted be His name) says: "He created man from blood
coagulated", and He said: "He created man from dry ringing clay
which is like baked pottery"( ); Allah (exalted be His name) also says:
"Who has made perfect everything He has created. And He
began the creation of man from clay";
He also says: "And He it is Who has created man from water,
and has made for him kindred by descent and kindred by marriage;
and thy Lord is All- Powerful".
He also says:
"He created man from a drop of fluid"; and Allah addressed all
people as "sons of Adam" five times in the Qur'an.
169
On talking about human nature, the Qur'an did not differentiate
between the traits of nations, nor between believers and non-believers.
Allah (exalted be His name) says:
"Verily, man is born impatient and miserly"
He also says: "Man is made of haste"
7 – The Qur'an being a book of guidance book, addressed all
people, believers and non-believers, to guide people them, not just to
increase their knowledge; with non-believers always as a possible
object to of that guidance. Therefore, the call to people of the book
was repeated 12 times, to people 20 times, and to the believers 89
times.
Allah (exalted be His name) says:
"O ye men, worship your Lord Who created you and those
who were before you, that you may become righteous"
He also said: "O ye men! eat of what is lawful and good in the
earth; and follow not the footsteps of Satan; surely, he is to you an
open enemy"; also he said: "O ye people! fear your Lord".
Who created you from a single soul and "created there from its
mate, and from them twain spread many men and women"; and
describing the stages of man's creation, He (exalted be His name) said:
"[22:6] O people, if you are in doubt concerning the Resurrection,
then consider that We have indeed created you from dust, then from a
sperm drop, then from clotted blood, then from a lump of flesh, partly
formed and partly unformed, in order that We may make Our power
manifest to you. And We cause what We will to remain in the wombs
for an appointed term; then We bring you forth as babes; then We rear
you that you may attain to your age of full strength. And there are
some of you who are caused to die prematurely, and there are others
among you who are driven to the worst part of life with the result that
they know nothing after having had knowledge".
171
8 – Relations among the people are strictly governed by
inviolable moral codes, not to be breached as commandments of God
that extremely honored the 'other' and made his humanity a religious
duty and justice, with him a sign of piety; since the goal is to
acknowledge and to know one another.
Allah (exalted be His name) says:
"O mankind, We have created you from a male and a female;
and We have made you into tribes and sub-tribes that you may
recognize one another. Verily, the most honorable among you, in the
sight of Allah, is he who is the most righteous among you. Surely,
Allah is All-knowing, All-Aware".
Since jumble or scramble is a universal code for human
beings, Allah says: ".... And had it not been for Allah‘s repelling men,
some of them by the others, the earth would have become filled with
disorder".
And in Surah Al-Hajj, He says: "And if Allah did not repel
some men by means of others, there would surely have been pulled
down cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein
the name of Allah is oft commemorated"; and even with this scramble,
Allah does not want anybody to be oppressed, He says: "O ye who
believe! be steadfast in the cause of Allah, bearing witness in equity;
and let not a people‘s enmity incite you to act otherwise than with
justice. Be always just, that is nearer to righteousness", and He also
said: "Verily, Allah commands you to make over the trusts to those
entitled to them, and that, when you judge between men, you judge
with justice. And surely excellent is that with which Allah admonishes
you! Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing".
Rendering justice toward and being honest with all people –
Muslims and Non-Muslims – are inalienable rights in Islam; what the
prophet himself did on the night of his Hijrah to Al-Madinah, when
He appointed Ali Ben Abu Taleb to return to the non-believers their
171
consignments which they left with him, was a clear example of this
highly regarded principle in Islam.:
Allah (exalted be His name) says:
"O ye who believe! be strict in observing justice, and be
witnesses for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or against
parents and kindred. Whether he be rich or poor, Allah is more
regardful of them both than you are. Therefore follow not low desires
so that you may be able to act equitably".( ).
9- Human life is protected on an equal basis:
Allah (exalted be His name) says: "On account of this, We
prescribed for the children of Israel that whosoever killed a person —
unless it be for killing a person or for creating disorder in the land —
it shall be as if he had killed all mankind; and whoso gave life to one,
it shall be as if he had given life to all mankind".
10 – Goodness can reach non-Muslims,; even the staunchest
enemies of Islam. Allah (exalted be His name) says: "And they feed,
for love of Him, the poor, the orphan, and the captive".
We should remember that the captive was an enemy who
became prisoner. Al-Islam exhorts feeding, and being good to, him
without changing his depiction as an enemy of the state of Islam.
Based on these religious principles and rules, Allah laid out
even more detailed rules for treating non-Muslims or 'the other'. The
position of this Ummah as Wassat, which linguistically means
between two things, is not that of the chosen people chosen by God. It
is only one of the nations created and would be tested by God, who
said: "And thus have We made you an exalted nation, that you may be
guardians over men, and the Messenger of God may be a guardian
over you".
172
Allah made the differences in religions and sects among
people a matter to be decided upon by Him alone on the day of
Judgment. He said:
"Surely, the Believers, and the Jews, and the Christians and the
Sabians — whichever party from among these truly believes in Allah
and the Last Day and does good deeds — shall have their reward with
their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve".(
), Also He said: "Surely, those who have believed, and the Jews, and
the Sabians, and the Christians — whoso believes in Allah and the
Last Day and does good deeds, on them shall come no fear, nor shall
they grieve".
And he also said: "As to those who believe, and the Jews, and
the Sabians, and the Christians, and the Magians and the idolaters,
verily, Allah will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection;
surely Allah is Witness over all things".
This is said despite the Qur'anic assertion that truth is clearly
manifest when it comes to believing in Allah. Muslims and nonMuslims, the peoples of the Book or others, .... whether they have the
word of God, or part of that word.
Having delineated the position of the Ummah of Islam, Allah
specified the degrees of its relations with other nations, i.e. with the
'other'. Allah did not set one degree only; He says:
"Thou shalt certainly find the Jews and those who associate
partners with God to be the most vehement of men in enmity against
the believers. And thou shalt assuredly find those who say, ‗We are
Christians,‘ to be the nearest of them in love to the believers. That is
because amongst them are savants and monks and because they are
not proud".
And after showing Muslims their staunchest enemies and their
closest friends, Allah does make also differentiates within a difference
still among these people. He says:
173
"They are not all alike. Among the People of the Book there is
a party who stand by their covenant; they recite the word of Allah in
the hours of night and prostrate themselves before Him".( ),
And he also says:
"Among the People of the Book there is he who, if thou trust
him with a treasure, will return it to thee; and among them there is he
who, if thou trust him with a dinar, will not return it to thee, unless
thou keep standing over him. That is because they say, ‗We are not
liable to blame in the matter of the unlearned;‘; and they utter a lie
against Allah knowingly".
And since deciding upon these matters (of belief and disbelief)
belongs to Allah alone on the day of Judgment, the issues of the 'other'
are tied up to the issues of justice and oppression; Allah says:
"Allah forbids you not, respecting those who have not fought
against you on account of YOUR religion, and who have not driven
you forth from your homes, that you be kind to them and act equitably
towards them; surely Allah loves those who are equitable".
And He also saidsays:
"Allah only forbids you, respecting those who have fought
against you on account of YOUR religion, and have driven you out of
your homes, and have helped OTHERS in driving you out, that you
make friends of them, and whosoever makes friends of them — it is
these that are the transgressors".
174
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•
Al-Waseet, 2nd, Edition, (Cairo: Arab Language Assembly,
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Dictionary of Philosophy, (Cairo: Arab Language Assembly,
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Encyclopedia of Politics, (Beirut: Arab Institution for Studies
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Ramzy& Munir El-B'alabaki, Encyclopedia of Famous Aran
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Lilmalaeen, 1992).
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20th Century Knowledge Encyclopedia,
Mohamed Farid Wagdy (Beirut: Dar El-Fikr, n.d.).
Arranged by:
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Yahia H. Farghal, "Essence of Secularism between Myth and
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Anwar Abdul Malik, "Historical Initiative on the New Silk
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Mohamed M. Yaqoot, The Prophet of Mercy: The Message
and the Man, 1st, Edition, (Cairo: Al-Zahraa for Arab Media, 2007)
175
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Nasser M. 'Aref, "Civilization, Culture, & Urbanity: A Study
of the History and Significance of the Concept", Series of Concepts
and Terminologies, 2dnd Edition, (Jordan: World Institute for Islamic
Thought, 1994).
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Subhi El-Salih, Islam and the Future of Civilization, 2nd,
Edition,(Damascus: Dar Qutaibah,1990).
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Ali Ben Ahmad (IbnHazm), The Final Word on Religions,
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(Beirut: Dar El-Jeel, 1996).
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Hussein M'unis, "Civilization: A Study of its Foundations and
Development",. Series of World Knowledge, Issue No. I 1978,
(Kuwait: National Council for Cultures, & Arts). Issue No. I 1978)
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Ibn Khaldun, The Introduction, Rearranged by: Ali A. Wafi,
(Cairo: Dar El-Nahdha, 12996).
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Abdul Aziz Barguth, The Presence of the Wassat Ummah in
the age of Globalization, ,Rawafed Series (Kuwait: Ministry of
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A. H. Johnson, Whitehead's Philosophy of Civilization,
Translated translated by Abdurrahman Baghy in, (New York: the
Franklin Institution, 1965).
•
Henry Lawrence, The Impossible Kingdom: France and the
Formation of Modern Arab World, translated by Basheer El-Seba'ei,
176
(Cairo: Dar Sinai for Publications in association with the French
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James H. Robinson, Civilization, Translated translated by Ali
islam, (Cairo: Egypt Printing House, n.d.).
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"Abdulla Taleb Donald Kohl's Conversion to Islam before
Sheikh El-Azhar" (London:, Al-Hayat, London: 18/11/2003).
•
Salih El-Twegri, "Meaning of Mercy in Language and
Terminology", at: http://mercyprophet.org.
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Nassr 'Aref, "Civilization.. Urbanity: Different Connotations
for
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Islam
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at:
http://www.islamonline.net (on 25/7/2007).
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Ibrahim Gharabiyah, "Politics and Reform in the Arab World
between
Urbanization
and
ruralizationRuralization",
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www.alwihdah.com,on (18/'2/'2004).
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Abdullah El-Freeji, "Predispositions and the Foundations of
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177
178
The author
Mamdouh Al-Shikh
Egyptian thinker.
Email: mmshikh@hotmail.com
Career Experience:
-Regular opinion –column contributor to the following newspapers:.
•
Al Mustaqbal newspaper (Lebanon).
•
Oman newspaper (Oman).
•
Al Dostour newspaper (Egypt).
•
Al Sawt Al Akhar Magazine (Iraq).
•
Palestine newspaper (Palestine).
•
Al Watan newspaper (Egypt).
-Member of the Egyptian Writers Federation.
-Manager of the Cairo bureau of Al Itjah satellite channel 2011-until
currently to date.
-Managing editor of the religious page of Al Dostour newspaper of
(Egypt) 2005-2008.
-Participated in the foundation of the ―Future Centre for Studies and
Research‖. ― Former Executive Director of the Centre in Egypt.
-Co-founder of Al Wasat political party
-Researcher at the International Centre for Studies in Egypt (19982001).
179
- Secretary of the culture committee in the Labour Pparty (1993-1996)
Publications:
Published writings about the Religious religious Phenomenon.
-Salafists: from the Shadows to the Heart of the Political Scene
.(Egypt: Akhbar Al Youm Publishing House, .Egypt, 2012)..
-Tarek Al Beshri: Judge-Historian – Intellectual - Reformer.
(Lebanon: Markaz Al Hadarah for the Development of Islamic
Thought .Lebanon, 2011).
-Islam Under Fire from French Secularism: What is Behind the
European Campaign Against Hijab and Niqab?.(Beirut, Egypt, and
Oman Publishers, 2010).
-Abdel Wahab Al Meseiri from Materialism to Islamic Humanism
(Lebanon: . Markaz Al Hadarah for the Development of Islamic
Thought .Lebanon, , 2008).
-Egyptian Extremist Islamic Groups in the Fire of September 11: tThe
Paradoxes of the Foundation and the Risk of Transformation .(Egypt:
Madbouli .Egypt, 2005).
-Sheikh Sha‘rawi and the Church: Tthe Pope and the Sheikh.
Electronic Edition. (London: E-kutub.com . London. , 2002, 2011).
Electronic Edition.E-kutub.com, 2011.
-Pope Shenouda and Jerusalem: Fact and Fiction (Egypt: . Khelood
for Publications.Egypt, 2000).
-Islamists and Secularists from Dialogue to War,.First Edition (Jordan:
.Dar AlBaiarek. Jordan, 1999).
Works with the TV media
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-Participated in the preparation of a TV program called ―Al Fehrest‖
―that was presented by Ibrahim Eissa and shown on Dream TV and
was presented by Ibrahim Eissa, 2007.
Participated in several talks with TV and Radio radio channels
such as: France24, Iqraa, Al Manar, CBC, MBC, Al Alam, Al Nahar,
Al Mehwar, ANN, Egyptian Official Radio, ….etc.
Personal iInformation
Nationality: Egyptian
Date of Birth: 14/-8/-1967.
181
182
The translator
I- Personal Information:
Name
Mohamed M. Hussein Mustafa
Nationality
Egyptian
Name
: Mohamed M. Hussein Mustafa
Nationality: Egyptian
II- Position:
Professor of International Relations, Faculty of Economics & Political
Science,
Cairo University, Giza, Egypt.
Educational background:
- Ph.D in Political Science from Boston Uuniversity, USA;
- M.A. in Political Science from Northeastern University, USA;
- B.Sc. in Political Science from Cairo University, Egypt.
Distinguished Activitiesactivities:
183
- Visiting Fulbright Professor of Political Science at Nazareth College,
Rochester, USA, 2003 /2004, for one full year, 2003/2004.
- Visiting Professor of Political Science, Emory University, Georgia,
USA, 2001, for one semester.
- Visiting Research Fellow, 1996, 1997, 1998 at the University of
Bonn, the Federal Republic of Germany, 1996, 1997, 1998.
- Visiting Research Fellow, 1995, 1994, for three months, the Free
University of Berlin, the Federal Republic of Germany, .1994/1995,
for three months.
- Visiting Research Fellow, Université de La Sorbonne, 1990 on a
French Governmental Scholarship, 1990, for one full year Université
de La Sorbonne, on a French Governmental Scholarship.
184